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WORLD POWER: 

THE EMPIRE of CHRIST 



WORLD POWER: 

THE EMPIRE ^/CHRIST 



BY 

JOHN MacNEILL 

Minister, Walmer Road Baptist Church, Toronto 






HODDER & STOUGHTON 

NEW YORK 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



^y. 



Copyright, 1914, by 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



DEC 23 1914 

©Cl,A39109o 






TO THE MEMBERS OF THE 

WALMER ROAD BAPTIST CHURCH, TORONTO 

WHOSE AFFECTION, LOYALTY AND COURAGE 

HAVE BROUGHT ME UNCEASING COMFORT AND INSPIRATION 

IN OUR WARFARE OF THE GOSPEL 



PKEFACE 

The sermons contained in this volume were suggested 
by various phases of the events leading up to the present 
war. At least two sudden revelations have been made to 
the popular mind by this crisis in our civilization. It 
has served on the one hand to reveal many baneful ten- 
dencies of our modern society, and on the other hand to 
uncover afresh some of the eternal principles of Chris- 
tianity. It occurred to the preacher that the modern 
spirit is expressed in some of the now famous phrases of 
individuals and nations and over against each phrase is 
some great Divine truth that answers to it. Each ser- 
mon is the attempt to bring the light of Christ's teaching 
to bear upon some certain feature of the present hour. 
No one realizes more than the author that he is dealing 
with only a passing phase of national life. What is said 
here of Germany applies only to the Germany of to-day, 
and what is said of the Germany of to-day might have 
to be said of the Russia, or France or Britain of to- 
morrow. In that sense the messages are momentary and 
incidental. There is no pretence to any comprehensive 
study of the relation of Christianity to the war in all 
its bearings, nor is there any endeavor to interpret these 
events of history in the light of Scripture prophecy. 
The chief aim was to emphasize, with the war as a 
background, some of the eternal truths that abide 
through all the shocks of change, to fix upon the public 

■5 



6 PREFACE 

and individual mind a new sense o£ responsibility, and 
to point the way to comfort and hope. 

Shattering the Nest was preached in the City Tem- 
ple, London, England, on Sunday morning, August ninth, 
the Sunday following Britain's entrance into the war. 
It was repeated to my own congregation on my return 
from England in September. The other sermons were 
delivered in the regular course of my ministry in Wal- 
mer Road Church on the nine successive Sunday even- 
ings of October and November. They were prepared 
from week to week, amid the pressing duties of a heavy 
pastorate. They are essentially spoken sermons, follow- 
ing the extemporaneous method, and they are printed as 
they were spoken. In response to the wishes of my 
congregation each sermon was published in pamphlet 
form on the week following its delivery. These pam- 
phlets have been gathered into this volume, with no 
attempt to rewrite them and little attempt to revise. 
While bearing in consequence many marks of literary 
imperfection they retain the form of direct spoken coun- 
sels and evangelistic appeals. They were graciously 
blessed by the Holy Spirit in the conversion of men and 
women and they are sent out in this form only with the 
hope that they may prove of further blessing to a wider 
congregation. 

John MacNeili,. 

Walmer Road Baptist Church, 
Toronto. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

FA6B 

World Power: The Empire of Christ . . . 11 

CHAPTER II 
Shattering the Nest . SI 

CHAPTER III 

Alliance and Entente: The Solidarity of the 

Race 55 

CHAPTER IV 
A Place in the Sun: The God of History . . 73 

CHAPTER V 
The Day! The Day! The Nemesis of Justice 93 

CHAPTER VI 

A Scrap of Paper: The Morality of Nations 113 

7 



8 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VII 

PAGE 

Blood and Iron: The Immorality of Militar- 
ism o 135 

CHAPTER VIII 

Treason to Culture: The Marks of Progress 153 

CHAPTER IX 
Peace with Honor: The Foundations of Peace 171 

CHAPTER X 

To A Finish: The Brotherhood of Man . . ipi 



WORLD POWER: THE EMPIRE OF 
CHRIST 



WORLD POWER: THE EMPIRE OF 
CHRIST 

Text: — "And it came to pass in those days that there 
•went out a decree from Ccesar Augustus that all the 
world should be taxed." 

"And it came to pass that the days were accomplished 
that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her 
-firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and 
laid him in a manger." — St. Luke 2:1^ 6, 7- 

Placed thus in contrast, these two passages 
reveal a wide difference in spirit, but they un- 
cover the same great ambition springing from 
the opposite poles of the spiritual world. They 
are as far apart as the universe in motive and 
method, but hidden away in each is the same 
daring ideal of the universal sway over men. 
Over there in Rome the di'eam of world power 
was floating in the mind of Caesar; over yonder 
in Bethlehem the dream of world empire was 
imbedded in the brain of an unconscious child. \ 
It was the beginning of a struggle for the 
mastery of the race. In those two figures — the 

11 



12 WORLD POWER 

Cffisar and the Christ — there are the potential 
rulers of mankind. The one is the incarnation 
of force; the other is the incarnation of faith. 
The weapon of the one is the sword; the 
weapon of the other is the cross. It is the car- 
nal against the spiritual, and with breathless 
interest the ages watch what the end will be. 

Let us glance for a moment at these two as- 
pirants for world power. On the one hand was 
Caesar, with countless legions, unbending laws, 
relentless organization and ruthless power. 
Wherever he will go the garments of the na- 
tions are rolled in blood. The only crown he is 
ambitious to wear is a helmet ; the only sceptre, 
a sword within his hand. Throughout all the 
ages the symbols of his power will be the reek- 
ing spear and smoking cannon; the pillaged 
cities and wasted lands; the slaughtered chil- 
dren and outraged women ; the laws that crush 
the very liberties out of the hearts of the free, 
and the taxes that drain the very blood out of 
the veins of the poor. And over against that 
figure there moves another to dispute his sway. 
At Bethlehem it might be said that God 
crossed the border into the territory of human 
life. He had mobilized all the forces of the 



WORLD POWER 13 

spiritual universe in Christ. The incarnation 
of Jesus was the invasion of humanity. It was 
the declaration of war. There was no blast 
of trumpet, no clash of sword, no flaunting 
of banner, no pomp and circumstance of war. 
'No sound indeed was heard except the croon- 
ing of a mother as she sang her lullaby to the 
Infant at her breast. He will wear no royal 
purple ; His robes will be the simple garments 
of a peasant. The only crown upon His head 
will be a crown of thorns ; the only sceptre, a 
nail print in His hand. Throughout all the 
ages the symbols of His power will be love 
and peace, gentleness and meekness, sacrifice 
and brotherhood and faith. He would not 
be anointed to sit upon any earthly throne, but 
He would be "anointed to preach the gospel 
to the poor"; He would be "sent to bind up 
the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the 
captive, and the opening of the prison to them 
that are bound ; to proclaim the acceptable year 
of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our 
God." 

And there they stand, the one against the 
other. It is the dimpled hand of the child 
against the mailed fist of the warrior. It may 



14 WORLD POWER 

look like a hopeless task for the child, but we 
shall see! we shall see! I know the pink and 
dimpled hand of the baby looks helpless on 
His mother's breast, but we are here to recall 
the fact to-night that this is the Hand that 
has thrown down the gauntlet to Caesar in 
every age; that has challenged the march of 
brute force across the fields of time; that cut 
the sinews of Roman supremacy and changed 
the currents of history for all the generations 
to come. 

The Dream of World Power by C^sar 

I have emphasized this contrast because it is 
apparent that it is this old world dream of 
Caesar that has precipitated the great strug- 
gle in which all Europe is engaged at the pres- 
ent time. You are well aware that for the past 
thirty years these phrases, "world power," 
"world influence," "world domination," in one 
nation at least, have passed from lip to lip 
and from group to group until men have 
visioned, not perhaps the actual ownership, 
but at least the actual domination of Europe 
and, through Europe, the domination of the 
world. 



WORLD POWER 15 

It would be interesting and illuminating did 
time permit to see how at steady intervals all 
through the centuries that idea has arisen to 
assert itself in the world. Long before the 
Christian era it made its appearance in Baby- 
lon, Carthage, Assyria, Persia, Egypt. But 
glance at the past 1,900 years in Europe alone 
and you will see how again and again in the 
brain of a single individual or a single nation, 
that dream has formed itself to gain the mas- 
tery of Europe and through Europe the mas- 
tery of the world. 

Roughly speaking, Europe came to its birth 
in the days of Julius Csesar. The Roman 
eagles winged their way over the many lands, 
and back from their borders came the laconic 
message of Csesar, "I came, I saw, I con- 
quered." That Roman Empire of 400 hun- 
dred years was perhaps the greatest national 
entity that ever appeared in Europe, but it 
was doomed to go down, submerged beneath 
the Gothic storm that burst so suddenly and 
so furiously out of the dark clouds of the north. 
In the eighth century the world idea fired the 
brain of Charlemagne, but his mighty empire 
fell because the machinery of his government 



16 WORLD POWER 

failed to consolidate the more permanent ele- 
ments of the state. In the eleventh century the 
idea seized the Norman brain and although 
they conquered England and most of France 
and Germany and part of Italy and ruled the 
sea, they were not able to assimilate their con- 
quests, with the exception of England, where 
their great William the Conqueror became the 
founder of our royal English line. It was 
the Popes who next dreamed of world power, 
and in the twelfth century Innocent III made 
a mighty effort for political control of Europe, 
forgetting that his kingdom, if he had a king- 
dom, was not of this world. It was Spain's 
turn next, and the sixteenth century saw the 
Spanish influence extend until she prepared 
to launch her thunderbolt against her last and 
greatest rival, England. But the hand of 
Providence was lifted against her, and Spain's 
Armada was shattered on the storm-swept 
coasts of Britain. Louis the Fourteenth of 
France, "the Grand Monarch," in the seven- 
teenth century took up the dream. It was he 
who said, "The State! I am the State." But 
that very State crumbled away beneath the 
wickedness and corruption of his wicked and 



WORLD POWER 17 

corrupted Court. One hundred years ago 
there sprang into the arena of Europe the daz- 
zluig genius of Napoleon. In the western 
world his like had not been seen before. The 
world idea was in his brain and the thunder- 
bolts of Jove were in his hand. At the close 
of his first Italian campaigns, the greatest 
military marvel of history, he was only twenty- 
eight years of age. "At that time," he said 
afterward, "I saw what I might become. I 
already saw the world beneath me as if I were 
being carried through the air." But the star 
of Napoleon set and his restless and ambitious 
spirit chafed itself away on the lonely rock of 
St. Helena. 

And now in our own day that dream of 
world power has again mounted to the brain 
of one man and one nation. There is evi- 
dence enough to be had, if evidence were need- 
ed, that the consuming passion of Prussia is 
to control the world. It is not many years ago 
that the German Kaiser at a national anni- 
versary declared, "that henceforth nothing 
must be settled in this world without the in- 
tervention of Germany and the German Em- 
peror." Prof. Treitschke, the German his- 



18 WORLD POWER 

torian, says that "the sceptre of the universe 
will belong to the Germans, who will impose 
their will upon the decadent and enfeebled 
people round about." A German writer of 
note has observed "that true history will be- 
gin from the moment that the German, with 
a mighty hand, seizes the inheritance of an- 
tiquity." General von Bernhardi in his notable 
book on "Germany and the Next War," has 
a chapter that bears the title "World Power 
or Downfall," and the refrain sounds through 
his volume again and again, "It is all or noth- 
ing; it is now or never." I pass no judgment 
on these statements for the moment. I merely 
quote them to show how that idea of world 
power is not dead, even in the twentieth cen- 
tury, how the fatal fire may burn in the brain 
of one man and one nation, how these danger- 
ous ambitions have jeopardized the freedom 
of mankind, and how the whole continent of 
Europe — and indeed the whole civilized world 
— feels that the threatened liberties and the 
sacred pledges of honorable nations must be 
defended at any cost against the merciless ag- 
gressions of a strong and unscrupulous foe. 



WORLD POWER 19 

The Claims of World Empire by Christ 

And now, against the background of all 
these foolish world dreams that have been en- 
tertained in turn by Roman and Norman, 
Spanish and British, French and German, let 
me fling up this great truth, the assertion which 
I have been preparing to make from the be- 
ginning. It is this — that there is not, and 
never has been, and never shall be, any single 
individual except One who has the right or 
the qualification to aspire to world power, and 
there is not, and never has been, and never shall 
be, any nation or society or people in the world, 
except one, that has the right or the resources 
to carry such claims to a glorious and success- 
ful issue. You ask me who that individual 
is, and I answer you in the words of our scrip- 
ture to-night, "Wherefore God also hath highly 
exalted Him and given Him a name that is 
above every name, that at the name of Jesus 
every knee should bow, of things in heaven 
and things on earth and things under the earth, 
and that every tongue should confess that 
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the 
Father." You ask me who that people, that 



20 WORLD POWER 

society, may be, and I answer you again in 
the words of scripture, "But ye are a chosen 
generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a 
peculiar people, that ye should show forth the 
praises of Him who hath called you out of 
darkness into His marvellous light." 

It is a long time since these great claims 
were made for Christ and His people. It is 
a long time since John in apocalyptic vision 
lifted one corner of the veil and showed us 
that "the kingdoms of this world are become 
the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ." 
It is a long time since Paul, surveying the 
battlefield where Christ had met His enemies, 
declared "that He must reign until He hath 
put all his enemies under His feet." It is 
longer still since the Psalmist in his inspired 
moment heard Jehovah breathe this promise 
to His Son, "Thou art my son, this day have 
I begotten thee: ask of me and I will give 
thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the 
uttermost parts of the earth for thy posses- 
sion," It is a long time, too, since Isaiah with 
seraphic vision saw Him coming up from the 
carnage of His last victory : "He that cometh 
forth from Edom with dyed garments from 



WORLD POWER 21 

Bozrah, this that is glorious in His apparel, 
striding along in the greatness of His 
strength." These are great claims, but there 
is not one prophecy concerning Christ that 
shall not be fulfilled, and there is not one claim 
for His people that shall not be made effec- 
tive when by His power in them they shall 
impose their spirit and His spirit upon all peo- 
ples and kindreds and nations and tongues. 

It may be said that this is but an empty 
claim, with no more promise of fulfillment than 
another. But it is not so. It is supported 
from every side — intellectual, spiritual, philo- 
sophical, ethnological. In general terms it 
may be said that the claims for world power 
with any aspiring nation or ruler rest upon 
three conditions; first, the personality that 
rules must have a universal appeal; second, 
the conquest he makes must be a spiritual con- 
quest; third, the end he secures must be the 
highest good of all. 

1. The world ruler must have in him the 
element of universal appeal. By which I mean 
that his nature must be so full and perfect, 
so many-sided and all-sided, so comprehensive 
and responsive, that the genius and tempera- 



22 WORLD POWER 

ment and spirit and aspirations of every peo- 
ple and nation and kindred and tongue will 
find its answer in him, and he shall be able to 
articulate the peculiar and subtle quality of 
every individual subject. And because that 
universal appeal has never been and can never 
be found in any mortal man, it is impossible 
for any one man to ever mount the throne 
of a true world power. Caesar is a Roman, al- 
ways a Roman, with the pride of the Roman 
in his heart, and his withering scorn scorch- 
ing the barbarian who crouches at his feet. 
With all his force of character, his versatility 
of mind, his gifts — statesman, poet, musician, 
soldier, preacher — ^it is impossible that the Ger- 
man Kaiser should ever become a true world 
ruler, for the fire is Prussian fire that lights 
his eye. The one man of mortal and sinful 
men who came nearest to it in Europe was 
Napoleon Bonaparte. In my humble judg- 
ment his was the most stupendous personality 
that ever flung its impact against the Euro- 
pean life; his the most rapid and compre- 
hensive mind; his the most dazzling and bril- 
liant genius. And yet Napoleon is a Corsican. 
The most he can accomplish is to interpret the 



WORLD POWER 23 

spirit of a passing phase of the French peo- 
ple. But Napoleon could never have incar- 
nated the genius of British liberty; he could 
never gather up into himself the elements of 
the true democracy. The wistful, hungry 
gaze of the Russian eyes could never find a 
response in his, for the full note of the uni- 
versal was not within his soul. It is in Christ 
and Christ alone you find that full sounding 
note. 

"One man of a particular age and race," 
says Bishop Gore, "cannot be the standard for 
all men, the judge of all men of all ages and 
races, the goal of all human moral develop- 
ment, unless he is more than one among many. 
And that is what we find Christ to be; He is 
more than "one among many." You cannot 
mention Him in the same breath and in the 
same class as Shakespeare and Socrates and 
Confucius and Emerson, brilliant as their 
genius may be. He is the one above all others. 
He is not "a son of men," nor "a son of man," 
nor "the son of men" ; He is "the Son of Man^' 
— the Universal Homo, blending in Himself 
all races and ages and temperaments and types. 
He belongs to all the centuries, though He 



24 WORLD POWER 

was born in the first. He belongs to all races, 
though He was born a Jew. He belongs to 
all countries, though He was born in Bethle- 
y hem. He combines all the purest and gentlest 
of womanhood with the strongest and great- 
est of manhood. And any man, whether he 
be prince or peasant, who will front the eyes 
of Jesus will find them flash back the native 
spiritual fire of his own ; and any man, whether 
he be Mongolian or Saxon or Teuton or Slav 
or Latin, who comes near to the heart of Christ, 
will find it throb in perfect sympathy with 
the deepest core of his own being. It is this 
that constitutes His first great claim for world 
power, and beside Him there is none else. 

2. Jesus alone is qualified for world power, 
for He alone can make the supreme spiritual 
conquest of men. You will agree with this that 
no man is conquered till the deepest thing in 
him has been subdued. You may enslave his 
body, but his soul is free. You may imprison 
his mind, but his spirit will range. Forty 
years ago the Germans conquered Alsace and 
Lorraine, but these provinces have never been 
subdued. Their citizenship is German but their 
allegiance is French. Their taxes have flowed 



WORLD POWER 25 

into the German treasury, but the incense that 
rises from their heart altars is "Vive la 
France." He who conquers must conquer the 
soul. Go back to Napoleon and learn that 
though he conquered almost every nation in 
Europe, he subdued none. The fires were 
smouldered, but they leapt out afresh. At St. 
Helena the Emperor said — you may read it in 
Bertrand's Memoirs — "I know men and I tell 
you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Alexan- 
der, Csesar, Charlemagne and myself have 
founded empires, but upon what did we rear 
the creations of our genius? Upon force. 
Jesus Christ alone founded an empire upon 
love, and to this very day there are millions 
who would die for Him." Of all the brilliant 
words of Napoleon these are among the most 
brilliant and wisest of them all. For the con- 
quest of Jesus is the conquest of the soul. It 
is the conquest of the deepest and last thing in 
man. His weapons are the weapons of His 
love. By these He will win where others fail, 
and every conquest is a conquest that endures. 
There is no other hope of a world kingdom, 
for no kingdom can hope for universal sway 
that does not base itself upon the conquest 



26 WORLD POWER 

of the deepest thing in man. It is that citadel 
that Jesus carries and that is the reason that 
no man can ever truly say that he belongs to 
the kingdom of Christ who has not yielded up 
to Him the inner citadel of his soul. 

3. And just because His conquest is a con- 
quest of the deepest thing in man, He meets 
the third qualification for world power in that 
He secures the highest good of man. For there 
are no interests so precious as the spiritual in- 
terests, and the highest good of these is the 
highest good of the whole man. Man has a 
body, but man is a soul. Whatever kingdom 
claims his allegiance must be a kingdom that 
secures the highest good of the highest part of 
man. And this has Jesus done. He has done 
it and none other has done it. It is His work 
and not the work of another. He has emanci- 
pated the souls of men. It may be within 
the power of others to lift the burdens 
from the body; Jesus alone can Hft the 
burdens of the soul. It may lie within 
the power of others to enfranchise the mind; 
Jesus Christ alone can liberate the spirit. 
He has met our worst enemies; He has re- 
moved our burdens ; He has cleansed our stain ; 



WORLD POWER 27 

He has cancelled our guilt ; He has made pos- 
sible our fellowship with the highest; He has 
opened to men the expanses of heaven ; He has 
charged life with purpose ; He has guaranteed 
our fullest development on the highest possi- 
ble pattern towards the highest possible goal. 
The good of the world and the good of the in- 
dividual are safe within His hands. He has 
caught us up into the eternal enterprises of 
God, and if we will we may share in the abid- 
ing glories and profits of His kingdom and 
serve Him from the steps of that Throne that 
shall never pass away. 

My friends, this is the true world power. 
This is the one kingdom that will survive. The 
issue is joined, the battle is set, and the out- 
come is sure. To-night I summon you in the 
name of the King to join your fortunes to His. 
It is Christ against Caesar, truth against error, \^ 
light against darkness, freedom against tyran- 
ny, the golden day against the dark age. 
Where do you stand? Under what sovereign 
do you serve? Is it the Emperor or the Child? 
Is it Christ or Csesar? 



II 

SHATTERING THE NEST 



II 

SHATTERING THE NEST 

Text: — "As an eagle stirreth up her nest, flutter eth 
over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh 
them, hedreth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did 
lead him, and there was no strange god with him." — 
Deut. xxxii., 11, 12. 

Of all the figures of the Old Testament, 
perhaps there is no other that illustrates in such 
a striking fashion the severity and tenderness 
of the Divine love. It was a figure that was 
familiar to the vivid imagination of every Ori- 
ental mind. On the face of some high chff , 
far above the plain, on a ledge of rock, an 
eagle, with instinctive wisdom, has built her 
nest, far from the prowling of wild beasts and 
safe from the fury of the storm. There she 
has hatched and reared her young. In the 
early days of their helpless babyhood she has 
carefully protected them, and has gone out, 
swift of pinion, keen of eye, and strong in beak 

31 



32 WORLD POWER 

and claw, to find their daily food. Under 
her tender care they flourish till their callow 
days are gone and the time has come when 
they must fly and forage for themselves on 
the wide plain below. But every attempt on 
the part of the mother bird to induce them to 
leave their nest is unavailing. The clifl* is so 
high, the plain is so far below, the air is so 
wide and empty, the ledge is so safe, and their 
wings are not yet tried. You can see the 
mother eagle thrusting them out from the nest, 
but they only flutter about here and there and 
hurry back to the shelter of their cosy home. 
And then the eagle does a strange and what 
seems a cruel thing. She deliberately wrecks 
her nest, tearing it to pieces with her claws 
and scattering its ruins out in the abyss be- 
low till the fledglings are left without a shel- 
ter on the lofty height. They are driven off 
the ledge. But the mother bird hovers over 
them. She guides them in their flight. By her 
own example she teaches them to use their 
wings. If one of them should weary and 
begin to fall, she swoops beneath it and bears 
it up on her strong pinions, but when its wings 
are rested and its fear is gone, she swoops 



SHATTERING THE NEST 33 

from beneath it again, and tosses it out once 
more upon the empty air. 

And thus the young birds are forced to ven- 
ture into that great space in which for all the 
future they must live and move and have their 
being. So they are compelled to use their 
wings, to develop their strength, to measure 
their latent energies against the forces of Na- 
ture until their pinions are trained, their eye 
is keen, the beak and claw grow strong, and 
the stout young eagle goes out to the enjoy- 
ment of his native element with the full use 
of every tested power. 

It was in the terms of that stern symbolism 
that Moses viewed the severity and tenderness 
of the Divine love, and also interpreted the se- 
cret of the nation's history. He was looking 
back, near the close of life, upon the dealings 
of Jehovah with His chosen people, dealings 
not always easy to understand. But a gleam 
of light came through the picture of the eagle 
and her nest. What if God were the great 
mother eagle of the race? Indeed, had not 
Jehovah said, "You know what I did to the 
Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' 
wings and brought you unto Myself." 



34 WORLD POWER 

Through the ages, therefore, one increasing 
purpose runs. It was God, then, who shook 
them out of their shelters in Egypt. It was 
the Lord who broke up the stagnation of their 
life. It was Jehovah who shattered their homes 
in Goshen, where they were content to remain 
in debasing slavery. It was God who forced 
them through the discipline of the wilderness, 
who sent them out into the venture of the 
desert, where their powers were awakened, 
their nationhood trained, where they were fitted 
for their place in history and prepared to step 
into the great scheme of redemption to which 
they were so vitally important in the purposes 
of God. 

,You will instantly recognize that here is un- 
covered one of those primitive and fundamen- 
tal principles lying at the basis of all life — 
a principle that holds good not only in the 
natural world, in the training of eagles, but 
in the supernatural world, in the training of 
human life. 

The Individual Experience 

And before I pass on to speak of the one 
theme that is uppermost in all our minds to-day. 



SHATTERING THE NEST 35 

let me try your patience a moment while we 
note the bearing of this principle on the indi- 
vidual. The truth is simply this — that every 
human life, to come to its best and highest, 
to be fitted for and reach the goal for which 
it was intended, will find its nest shattered, and 
must be prepared to confront those upheavals 
that break up our shelters and cast us out on 
the wide spaces of the new and the untried. 
We need not go beyond our own lives to know 
how prone we all are to settle down into the 
snug and complacent nest that our circum- 
stances may afford, refusing to face the new 
and the unknown. Ah, then it is the part of 
God's wisdom and love to allow the shattering 
of the nest, that in the consequent discipline 
our powers may be developed and our faith 
in Him increased. 

Such a principle lies at the basis of all in- 
tellectual growth. Change is a prime condi- 
tion of all apprehension and intelligence. The 
mind dies under stagnation. It only expands 
as it is compelled to venture into the hitherto 
unexplored. As James Martineau says: 
"Dipped for ever in the same scene, plunged 
in the one color, filled with one monotone, no 



36 WORLD POWER 

perception would be startled into birth; the 
glance of attention sleeps till the moment of 
transition; it leaps out at the edges of light 
and darkness, of sound and silence, and in 
crossing the line first learns the realms on 
either side." Much more is such an upheaval 
the condition of all moral and spiritual prog- 
ress. The most earnest souls have welcomed 
the day when their nest was shattered, when 
they were pushed off their comfortable ledge 
to test their wings in the unknown spaces of 
life. You recall that prayer of Robert Louis 
Stevenson, which he calls "The Celestial Sur- 
geon," off'ered when he feared the loss of the 
keen appreciation of life's common joys: 

If I have faltered more or less. 
In my great task of happiness; 
If I have moved among my race. 
And shown no glorious morning face; 
If beams of happy human eyes 
Have moved me not; if morning skies. 
Books, and my food, and summer rain, 
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain: — 
Lord ! Thy most pointed pleasure take. 
And stab my spirit broad awake; 
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, 
Choose thou, before that spirit die, 
A piercing pain, a killing sin, 
And to my dead heart run them in! 



SHATTERING THE NEST 37 

Often and often was that prayer answered in 
Stevenson's experience; not often through 
pleasure, but many times through pain. Every 
nest he feathered was shattered. He was con- 
stantly being driven off the ledge of life. He 
was ever testing his wings against the stormy 
gales: but think of the pinions he had, think 
of the vision he gained, think of the ranges he 
swept, and then ask if it was not an eternal 
kindness that hovered over him. 

The Present Crisis 

And now, not for one individual but for 
millions, not for one nation alone but for al- 
most every nation of Europe, there has been 
shattered, at one ruthless stroke, the precarious 
nest of international peace that has been tot- 
tering so long on the doubtful security of 
the diplomatic ledge. To-day we are involved 
in a struggle such as the world has not known 
before and the issues of which are beyond any 
human wisdom to forecast. This is not the 
hour nor the place to deal with the long train 
of events leading up to this crisis, so far as 
those events are known to the world. The 



38 WORLD POWER 

sobering fact is this, that the calamity is upon 
us, and we must see it through to the end. 
We have put our hand to the plough, and 
there can be no looking back, and we must 
ask ourselves what our spirit and behavior are 
to be. 

Almost all will depend on how far the con- 
science of the nation is clear before Heaven. 
The first spectre to be laid is any haunting 
fear as to the righteousness of our cause. In 
that region every man must decide for him- 
self. For my own part, I do not hesitate to 
say that there is enough, and far more than 
enough, on the open page of our diplomacy, 
as set forth in the White Paper published by 
His Majesty's Government, to clear the con- 
science of the nation, to strengthen her moral 
purpose, and clothe her with the conviction 
that she has unsheathed her sword in a cause 
that is right and just. It is now clear to all 
the world that our distinguished Foreign Sec- 
retary — and no greater has guided the foreign 
policies of Britain since the days of Pitt — that 
Sir Edward Grey, whose sincerity and earnest- 
ness are recognized as unimpeachable in every 
Court of Europe, has labored in the face of 



SHATTERING THE NEST 39 

great obstacles and in spite of sore provoca- 
tion, till the last moment and beyond it, to pre- 
serve for Em'ope "an honorable and a lasting 
peace." It is now clear to all the world that 
by the rejection — the unwarranted and inso- 
lent rejection — of his just and generous over- 
tures his great and beneficent purposes have 
been defeated. It is now clear to all the world 
that nothing more than Britain has done could 
she have done to prevent, in the first instance, 
the outbreak of war, and to limit, in the sec- 
ond instance, the area of hostilities once begun. 
It is now clear to all the world that nothing 
less than Britain demanded of Germany could 
she have demanded and maintain her honor. 
As the guardian of her own purity, which is 
dearer to her than life, and as the protector of 
the smaller States, the most reluctant must 
confess that Britain has gone the last step 
towards peace that was consistent with her own 
honor and consistent with that obligation that 
the strong must always owe to the weak. No 
better defence — if defence, indeed, were need- 
ed — can be found than the notable words of 
Britain's great Prime Minister, whose clear 
judgment and calm spirit, whose chastened 



40 WORLD POWER 

wisdom and unflinching courage, are among 
the greatest assets of the nation at this crisis in 
her history. 

*'If I am asked," said Mr. Asquith, "what 
we are fighting for, I can reply in two sen- 
tences. In the first place, to fulfil a solemn 
international obligation, an obligation which, 
if it had been entered into between private per- 
sons in the ordinary concerns of life, would 
have been regarded as an obligation not only 
of law but of honor, which no self-respect- 
ing man could possibly have repudiated. I 
say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the 
principle, in these days when material force 
sometimes seems to be the dominant influence 
and factor in the development of mankind — 
we are fighting to vindicate the principle that 
small nationalities are not to be crushed in 
defiance of international good faith by the ar- 
bitrary will of a strong and overmastering 
power. I do not believe any nation ever en- 
tered into a great controversy — and this is 
one of the greatest history will ever know — 
with a clearer conscience, and stronger con- 
viction that it is fighting, not for aggression, 
not for maintenance even of its own selfish 



SHATTERING THE NEST 41 

interest, but in defence of principles the main- 
tenance of which is vital to the civilization of 
the world." 

Every word in that historic paragraph is 
weighty and none more so than the last sen- 
tence. It is the civilization of the world that 
is at stake. Liberty is threatened in the very 
cradle of liberty itself. The inalienable rights 
of every free-born citizen throughout the 
world are jeopardized by the aggressive tyran- 
ny of a proud and insolent militarism. The 
supremacy of the German spirit over Europe 
would set the civilization of the world back a 
thousand years. The fruits of our freedom 
are too precious to be abandoned after the long 
struggle of the centuries. That freedom was 
purchased on the blood-soaked fields of Europe 
by our fathers and, please God, it shall not 
be sold without the blood of their sons. There 
never was a better cause undertaken after more 
patient exhaustion of the means of an honor- 
able peace, and in the face of more deliberate 
and insulting provocation, and there are no 
lengths of resistance and self-sacrifice, we be- 
lieve, to which the British nation and the na- 



42 WORLD POWER 

tions of the Empire will not be prepared to 
go to defend the right and to crush that mad 
spirit which, beginning in "folly," has had 
its end in "wickedness." I speak of this be- 
cause, without a clear conscience, our purpose 
cannot be high, our faith cannot be firm and 
strong; but with the profound conviction that 
our cause is right, the faith of the nation will 
remain unclouded, the courage of the nation 
will never falter, the sacrifice of the nation will 
know no limits; no defeat shall ever dismay 
us, no victory shall ever spoil us, for with un- 
shamed conscience we can and we will in 
humblest dependence wait upon God. 

The Duties of the Hour 

With that deep sense of right undergirding 
all, what is to be the spirit of our people? 
There are three duties that await us: 

1. We must seek, first of all, for the good 
that lies beyond this conflict^, for good there 
surely is. It is not easy now to see its form. 
It is hard to trace one gleam of light through 
the cloud. It is difiicult to behold anything 
in the immediate prospect but the incalcula- 



SHATTERING THE NEST 43 

ble suffering and misery that must fall on 
guilty and innocent alike, and the immeasura- 
ble loss that must come, not to this country 
alone, but to every country, and not to this 
age alone, "but to posterity and to the whole 
prospects of European civilization." But 
good there will be ! I repeat, it is not easy now 
to see. 

For who can so forecast the years. 
And find in loss a gain to match? 
Or reach a hand through time to catch 
The far-off interest of tears? 

But a "far-off interest" there will surely be 
to all our tears, and in the providence of God 
a mightier gain will match each overwhelming 
loss. It may be that the Empire needs this 
baptism of blood. We are not here to con- 
demn one another, but to confess that, as a 
nation, in the riot of gain and pleasure, we 
have been forgetting God. Isaiah tells of a 
time when Israel was soggy with content, 
steeped in the stupor of material prosperity, 
morally insensible under the narcotic of world- 
ly gain and pleasure, till it was written of 
them, "The heart of this people is waxed fat, 
their ears are dull of hearing, their eyes have 



44 WORLD POWER 

been closed, lest they see with their eyes and 
hear with their ears and believe with their 
hearts." Is it any wonder that such a nest of 
comfort was shattered and they passed into the 
captivity of Babylon, from which they 
emerged with a chastened view of life and a 
new recognition of the sovereignty of God? 

Neither must we forget that it has been out 
of such experiences that almost every nation 
has come to its best in literature and art and 
religion. It was this fact that led Ruskin, 
no doubt, to make that extreme statement 
about war. "I found in brief that all great na- 
tions learned their truth of word and strength 
of thought in war; that they were nour- 
ished in war and wasted in peace, taught by 
war and deceived by peace, trained by war 
and betrayed by peace — in a word, that they 
were born in war and expired in peace." 

Ruskin was not an advocate of war — far 
from it. He is only hinting at this stern fact, 
that without the ministry of severe discipline 
the best of the nation is bound to die. And 
surely it is a striking fact that the highest 



SHATTERING THE NEST 45 

period of literature and art and philosophy in 
Greece is coupled with a life and death strug- 
gle against Persia. It was when England 
was fighting against Spain and Spain's ar- 
mada that she entered upon the "golden age" 
of English literature that has never been sur- 
passed, if, indeed, it has ever been equalled, 
in the subsequent history of English letters. 
Is it not. a significant fact that during the 
first ten years of the last century, from 1800 
to 1810, or you might stretch it to 1815, at a 
time when all Europe was blood-dripping with 
the wars of Napoleon, she gave birth to al- 
most every great man who was to guide her 
better destinies for a hundred years to come? 
In that terrible decade of travail, England 
gave birth to Disraeli, Gladstone, Cobden, 
Bright, Browning, Tennyson, Shaftesbury, 
and many others, all born within ten years of 
each other. In these same ten years Italy 
suckled at her bleeding breasts Cavour, Maz- 
zini. Garibaldi, and a few years later Victor 
Emmanuel, the four men who secured the lib- 
erty of the Italian people and brought about 
the unity of the Italian kingdom. In those 
same ten years Germany, fighting then against 



46 WORLD POWER 

the Cffisarism of which she is now the exponent, 
produced her first and greatest statesman, Bis- 
marck; France gave us Victor Hugo for 
literature; while the throb of that world-up- 
heaval seemed to reach America and there 
sprang into being Wendell Phillips, William 
Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
Henry Ward Beecher, and last and most 
splendid of all, Abraham Lincoln, the flower 
of American manhood. No ! I am not an ad- 
vocate of war. I believe that "war is hell" and 
comes out of hell. But let us not forget that 
in His overruling wisdom God brings good out 
of evil; He will make the wrath of men to 
praise Him; and let us remember that the high- 
est spiritual interests and hopes of the race 
were redeemed and secured out of the mys- 
tery of suffering by the world's Saviour in 
Gethsemane and Calvary. 

Already, in the present crisis, there is much 
that has been gained. The hearts of men every- 
where have been cleansed of cowardice and 
divorced from selfishness by the superb spec- 
tacle of Belgium — heroic little Belgium — lift- 
ing herself with victorious courage against the 



SHATTERING THE NEST 47 

aggressions of a tyrannous and unscrupulous 
foe. Within our own Empire we have seen, 
as by a miracle, the sudden welding of the 
nation's life. Men and parties which a fort- 
night before were irreconcilable leaped into 
one another's arms. Without regard for poli- 
tical attachments, men have been invited to ac- 
cept, and have accepted, the gravest responsi- 
bilities at their country's call. The opening 
of homes and mansions for hospitals, the out- 
pouring of a quarter of a million in a single 
day for the Prince of Wales' Fund, the mag- 
nificent response to his Majesty's call for vol- 
unteers — prove that the spirit of the nation is 
not dead and the spirit of sacrifice, thank God, 
still lives. Ireland, which ten days before was 
the blackest cloud on our otherwise bright sky, 
is now the brightest spot on the dark horizon, 
for Nationalist Catholics of the South and 
Protestant Ulstermen of the North, ready 
two weeks before to lock arms in civil strife, 
are now shoulder to shoulder to defend the na- 
tion's honor and protect the country's flag. 
The danger that has threatened the Mother- 
land has brought her children from over the 
seas with swiftest steps to hjsr side. From 



48 WORLD POWER 

India and every self-governing Colony of the 
Empire have come the warm and unsolicited 
assurances of support. You know the re- 
sponse awakened in Canada, and I am confi- 
dent that I voice the spirit which animates this 
land, that there shall not be lacking the full 
share of men and treasure and courage to as- 
sist that dear old Motherland who has be- 
queathed and secured to us the sweetest and 
truest liberties we enjoy. 

2. Our second duty is to remember that God 
is over all. In the stately words of our lesson, 
"It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the 
earth and the inhabitants thereof are as grass- 
hoppers." The nations before Him are as a 
drop of a bucket. He is the exalter of princes 
and the debaser of monarchs. He setteth up 
whom He will and putteth down whom He 
shall choose. Eagle-like He moves with lord- 
ly power in lofty planes. He is strong to de- 
stroy as well as to save. His eye is keen to 
mark every foul thing upon the earth. His 
sudden justice often swoops down on the rot- 
ting carcase of Society to rend it in pieces 
with His unexpected judgment. We recall 



SHATTEHING THE NEST 49 

what Victor Hugo said of Waterloo: "Was 
it possible for Napoleon to win Waterloo? 
We answer, No. Why? Because of Welling- 
ton? No. Because of Blucher? No. Be- 
cause of the rain? No. Because of God. It 
was time this vast man should fall. He had 
been impeached before the throne of the In- 
finite and his fall had been decreed." And 
then Victor Hugo adds, with almost a touch 
of sacrilege: "Napoleon bothered God." Woe 
to the nation that "bothers God"! We can 
hope and ask for nothing higher than to be 
the instnmients of His will in all His unfold- 
ing of the moral order. And if so be that we 
are among those who are His chosen ministers 
of judgment, we must do our appointed work 
thoroughly and well. And I do not say that 
with the German people in mind. There is 
a sense in which we are not at war with the 
German people, but with a war spirit behind 
them which they detest and under which they 
groan as deeply as we. And it can hardly be 
doubted that they shall serve the interests of 
peace and the Kingdom of the Prince of Peace 
who shall join hands to blot out from the 
face of the earth that selfish, cruel, unscrupu- 



50 WOULD POWER 

lous, blood-lusting" spirit of militarism, which, 
for the gratification of its own ambitions, does 
not hesitate "to wade through slaughter to 
a throne and shut the gates of mercy on man- 
kind." 

3. Our third duty is to fortify ourselves for 
great sacrifice. We shall all be sufferers. 
There is no one, rich or poor, high or low, from 
the King with his overwrought anxiety to the 
lowliest child, on whom the burden will not 
fall. The pressure of pain will come upon 
Society everywhere. Destitution will not be 
slow to visit us. Sorrow shall sit on every 
doorstep. The homes of great and small will 
be wrapped in gloom alike because the light 
will have died out of young eyes, and the 
strong hearts of fathers and husbands and 
brothers and sons will have ceased to beat. It 
is the duty of all to sink their selfish interests 
in the interests of mankind. We must lend 
ourselves — as each one may — to the service of 
others. The individual loss, the individual 
^ief, the individual discomfort, must be for- 
gotten. We have had a noble example set 
for us by President Wilson of the United 



SHATTERING THE NEST 51 

States of America, who, from the bedside of 
his dying wife, penned the messages of medi- 
ation to every warring State of Europe, mes- 
sages which thus far have fallen on deaf and 
heedless ears. It is not easy thus to subordi- 
nate personal grief to the service of mankind. 
But it must be done. The rich must pour out 
their wealth like water; the poor, their sym- 
pathy and service. Employers must protect 
employees who often live on such a narrow 
margin. Employees must be considerate of 
their employers who have such immense inter- 
ests at stake. All greed and attempts to trade 
on the nation's disaster must be crushed out 
of our hearts. Not even in money or food must 
we try to hoard beyond our daily and suf- 
ficient need. Above all things, we must clothe 
our spirits in humility and intercession. We 
must bear in our souls, not the weakness of 
panic but the power of peace. We must carry 
on our lips, not the empty boastings of pride 
but the persistent prayers of faith. For our 
help is in God. It is in no other. More than 
all else our leaders need — and shall I say de- 
sire — our prayers, that theirs may be the Di- 
vine wisdom and theirs the Divine power. 



52 WORLD POWER 

The nest is shattered! The birds are out 
upon the empty air. We know not what the 
end may be. We know not the ghastly harvest 
of the plain below. But this we know, that 
our hope must be in God. He will not be far 
from those who put their trust in Him. He 
will be above, below, and round about them, 
to bear them on His strong pinions, for "the 
Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath 
are the everlasting arms." 



Ill 

ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE: THE 
SOLIDARITY OF THE RACE 



Ill 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE: THE 
SOLIDARITY OF THE RACE 

Text — " .... The new man, •which is renewed in 
Jcnowledge after the image of him that created him: 
•where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor 
uncircumcision. Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but 
Christ is all and in all." — Colossians 3: 10^ 11. 

The sentiments of these words are echoed 
in many parts of the scripture, but they fall 
with peculiar and startling force from the 
lips of Paul because in birth and training" and 
temperament he was the greatest individual- 
ist of his day. The native atmosphere of this 
youth was designed to call him away from the 
world-idea of the common life of man, and 
everything conspired to make him proud and 
exclusive and self-contained. By nature he 
was one of those independent spirits who is 
born to lead, who is a pioneer in the world 
of thought, blazing new trails, establishing new 
standards, and setting aside with a fine aloof- 

55 



56 WOULD POWER 

ness of soul the assistance and companionship 
of men. He had been born, as you know, into 
the great Roman Empire, the proudest and 
most exclusive of the old empires of the world. 
When occasion demanded it, Paul appealed to 
his rights as a Roman citizen, and even to 
the last the flash of the old Roman fire would 
leap forth from his eye. And above all things 
here was a man whose religion was the re- 
Hgion of the Jew. It was narrow; it was 
Pharisaic; it was traditional; it was exclusive; 
it was selfish. He himself reminds us that 
"after the strictest sect of our religion I lived 
a Pharisee," that he was "a Hebrew of the 
Hebrews, as touching the law a Pharisee, con- 
cerning zeal persecuting the church, touching 
the righteousness which is in the law, blame- 
less." 

And now in the very intensity of that ex- 
clusive life there swept over the man a change 
— a breath — a power that broke down all bar- 
riers, that overleaped all boundaries, that lifted 
and pushed back the horizons until the social 
and racial and religious differences among men 
disappeared and there emerged instead the 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 57 

great conception of the spiritual unity of the 
race. Strange indeed it is now to hear a 
bigoted Jew say to the Romans that "there is 
no difference between the Jew and the Greek." 
Strange indeed it is to hear a proud aristocrat 
take up the cause of the oppressed and say, 
"Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is 
injured and I burn not?" Strange indeed 
it is to hear a haughty Roman say that "there 
is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor un- 
circumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor 
free." I shall speak a little later of the power 
that wrought that change, but the change it- 
self is one of the marvels of history. Once 
he had thought of men as Romans or other- 
wise; now he thinks of them as the citizens of 
the world. Once he had looked upon them 
as possible proselytes ; now he looks upon them 
as possible saints. Once he regarded them as 
aristocrats or otherwise ; now he regards them 
as the souls for whom Christ died. He has 
caught the great conception of the unity of 
mankind; he sees the solidarity, the oneness 
of the race, its common sin, its common sor- 
row, its common pain, its common hope, its 
common destiny — and from the moment of 



58 WOULD POWER 

that vision the world became his parish and 
he gave himself to the service of mankind. As 
Frederick W. Myers puts it finely into his 
lips: 

"Only like souls I see the folk thereunder. 

Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be 
kings, — 
Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder. 
Sadly contented in a show of things: — 

"Then with a rush the intolerable craving 

Shivers throughout me like a trumpet-call, — 
Oh to save these ! to perish for their saving. 
Die for their life, be offered for them all!" 

The Fact 

It is this truth so mightily enthroned in and 
gripping the mind of Paul, that we emphasize 
to-night. Yes, there is such a thing as the 
solidarity of the race! Beneath all the accu- 
mulated rubbish of our modern society it has 
been oftentimes obscured. There is a sense in 
which all men belong to each other and belong 
to the whole world and are bound together 
in the same great bundle of a universal life. 
There are theoretical proofs more than suf- 
ficient to demonstrate that. Science, with its 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 59 

root idea in the universality of law, forces 
upon us the thought of a world that is a co- 
herent whole. Psychology, with its analysis 
of the mental process, declares not only the 
essential unity of the individual mind, but, 
through imitation and the reaction of mind 
upon mind, the presence of a universal con- 
sciousness. Philosophy, if it starts at all, must 
start with the assumption of a universe, a real 
unity of truth, and a scheme of things in which 
no being or phenomenon is unrelated to the 
whole. And what theory has declared, practi- 
cal hfe has demonstrated. Yielding to the 
impulse of their common interests, we find 
men and women grouping themselves into 
families, into cities, into nations, or into 
groups of nations, and the dream of the Uto- 
pian poet is "the parliament of man, the fed- 
eration of the world." For the past fifteen or 
twenty years in Europe there has been grow- 
ing up one group of nations — Germany, Aus- 
tria, and Italy — ^known as the Triple Alliance, 
bound together by their common ambitions and 
their common need. On the other hand there 
has been shaping another group — Britain, 
France and Russia — ^in the Triple Entente, 



60 WORLD POWER 

bound together in the defence and preservation 
of their common life. And not in our Ufe- 
time have we seen or shall we see such a demon- 
stration as this war has furnished of the soli- 
darity of the race. The first blow had not been 
struck twenty-four hours till it was felt in the 
farthest corners of the world. It was not the 
nations who were involved who alone were af- 
fected, it was every nation on the face of the 
earth. The effect was felt in every stock ex- 
change, in the industrial markets, in the home 
life, in the travelling conveniences, in the per- 
sonal relationships of men. Because of that 
blow, 500 miles away a sentry took his place 
beside a wayside bridge in a Scottish glen; 
5,000 miles away a mother's head is bowed in 
gi'ief in Vancouver; a child on the other side 
of the world is fatherless in Australia; a sol- 
dier joins his army in the seclusion of Thibet. 
Because of that blow a king of a cannibal 
island in the heart of the Pacific must needs 
declare his neutrality towards the nations he 
has never seen. The vibrations of that blow 
have thrilled into the last and farthest fibre 
of the world's life. Nations may be neutral, 
but they cannot escape. Homes may be dis- 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 61 

tant, but they are not exempt. O yes, there 
is a great world life to which we all belong. 
There may not be a common language of the 
lips, but there is a common language of the 
soul. The yellow Mongolian, the swarthy 
Latin, the fair Saxon, the red-skinned Indian, 
merge all their colors in the common hue of 
the crimson tides of the heart, and manhood 
recognizes manhood by the swift instinct of 
the mind. 

And what theory has propounded and life 
has proved, revelation has confirmed. God has 
made of one blood all nations of the earth. 
We are members one of another, and none of 
us liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto 
himself. We are inextricably bound up with 
one another in joy and sorrow, in life and 
death. You will remember how Lowell teaches 
that in some of the most vigorous verse he 
ever wrote. The noble deed of one nation 
uplifts the whole world, for: 

"When a deed is done for freedom, through the broad 

earth's aching breast 
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from East 

to West, 
And the slave where'er he cowers feels the soul within 

him climb 



62 WORLD POWER 

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime 
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem 
of time." 

Ah, jes, but the reverse is also true, and the 
tyranny of one nation crushes farther into the 
earth the slave of every land. It was for that 
reason that all the world regarded the sacking 
of Louvain, not only as a crime against Bel- 
gium, but as a crime against Humanity. 

"So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a 

chill. 
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill. 
And the slave where'er he cowers feels his sympathies 

with God, 
In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by 

the sod, 
Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the 

nobler clod." 

And that is possible because men are bound to- 
gether, and for the reason that when you smite 
one life you smite the whole corporate life of 
man. 

"For mankind is one in spirit, and an instinct bears 

along. 
Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right 

or wrong; 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 63 

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast 

frame. 
Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy 

or shame: — 
In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal 

claim." 

The Basis 

This then is the fact, and now, in the sec- 
ond place, we ask for the basis on which it 
surely rests. What is this binding element 
in human life? I have already hinted that it 
lies deeper than language or color or climate 
or creed. It does not rest upon the natural 
affinities of the nations, for even in the present 
war many of the natural affinities are de- 
stroyed and unnatural antagonisms or un- 
natural alliances have risen up. Britain and 
Germany, oftentimes the allies of the past in 
the cause of liberty, are ranged against each 
other to-day, but the time will come again, 
we trust, when the true Germany will stand 
once more as the champion of freedom. Rus- 
sia and Japan, fighting a few years ago to the 
bitter death in the Orient, have joined hands 
in a common cause. South Africa twelve years 
ago was slaughtering Britain's sons on the 



64 WOULD POWER 

South African veldt and now is sending her 
sons to the defence of the Empire. No! No! 
This solidarity of the race lies deeper than 
any consideration I have named. If you will 
note two phrases in my text you will see how 
Paul reveals the bonds that bind the race in 
one. In the first part of the verse he tells 
us that man was created in the likeness of 
God, "after the image of Him that created 
him"; in the last part of the verse he tells us 
that all the distinctions are blotted out because 
Christ is present in human life and "Christ is 
all and in all." Here, then, are the founda- 
tions on which the solidarity of the race abides 
— first, because the human is created in the im- 
age of the Divine, and second, because the 
Divine is incarnate in the image of the hu- 
man. Take this congregation here to-night. 
You are strangers to me, many of you, and 
most of you to one another, and yet we are 
all bound together in a solidarity of life. It is 
not because we live in the same city, or speak 
the same language, or seek the same interests. 
It is because that in me and in you and in every 
one of us there is the image of God. It may 
be, and it is, fearfully defaced and scarred, 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 65 

but nevertheless the traces of the image re- 
main. We have something in common, and 
it is the shattered heritage of the Divine. Some 
of you will say that the only common quality 
we have is sin, and it is true we all have that 
quality — no man without it — but man has sin 
because man has a moral nature that is capa- 
ble of good or evil, and man has a moral na- 
ture because he was created in the image of 
God. 

But that is not all. There is another unify- 
ing bond — it is the presence of Christ. You 
talk about the solidarity of the race. What 
if God Himself were to step into the soli- 
darity ! And this He has done. "A God must 
mingle with the game." Christ is the ideal 
head of humanity. Their common hopes and 
fears and aspirations, their sin and their salva- 
tion, are all undertaken by Him. He has as- 
sumed the liabilities of the race. He has taken 
over the spiritual fortunes of the whole world. 
When you remember that every man in the 
world is a man for whom Christ died, that 
every man in the world is a man in whom Christ 
may reproduce Himself, that every man in the 
world is a man for whom Christ alone has fur- 



66 WORLD POWER 

nished the opportunity to realize the best and 
the highest and be changed into His image 
— then you begin to see how for humanity 
"Christ is all and in all," how we are bound 
together not only by the failure of the first 
Adam, but by the victory of the last Adam, 
and how it may be true that in Him "all things 
are yours; whether Paul, or ApoUos, or Ce- 
phas, or the world, or life, or death, or things 
present, or things to come; all are yours; and 
ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." 

The Implications 

The implications arising from this great 
truth are too many and far-reaching to be fol- 
lowed out to-night. But there are two of them 
that I wish to emphasize before I close — the 
one is the great obligation resting upon each 
of us because of our place in the solid world, 
the other is the great hope coming to us be- 
cause of God's place in the same solidarity 
of life. 

1. We get a glimpse of the tremendous re- 
sponsibility that rests upon each individual life. 
Because of the solidarity of the race it lies 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 67 

within our power to help to make or mar the 
world. "Our echoes roll from soul to soul and 
go forever and forever." It is impossible for 
you to cheat a man in business in Toronto 
without affecting the life of China. It is im- 
possible to yield to greed, or indulge in sin, or 
cherish vanity, or wallow in lust, without strik- 
ing a blow at the spiritual interests of the Hot- 
tentots of Africa. And, thank God, the other 
side is also true. You cannot live a noble life 
in a common hamlet without blessing the hfe 
of India ; you cannot be unselfish in motive and 
pure in thought without uplifting the life of 
the whole world. 

"No stream from its source 
Flows seaward, how lonely soever its course, 
But some land is gladdened. No star ever rose 
And set without influence somewhere." 

I want to say that to the very weakest and 
lowliest life here. I want to say it to the timid 
little mother who creeps out into the big world 
from her humble home, thinking that she 
counts for nothing. You do not count for 
nothing; you count for everything; as any 
one of us may count for everything in the good 



68 WORLD POWER 

of the world. Ah, it is a solemn thing to live! 
To-day the sober judgment and moral sense of 
the civilized nations have passed the verdict of 
guilt upon the Prussian military party and 
their philosophy of might. And they are not 
mistaken. It was Germany that lighted the 
fuse that has fired the crowded magazine of 
modern civilization. The perpetration of that 
crime lies at her door. But while all that is 
true, let us remember that we are not guilt- 
less. We are not guiltless as a nation nor as 
individuals. We have all had our share in pre- 
paring the conditions that have brought about 
the war. In our love of ease and power, in. 
our greed and grasping, in our adherence to 
false standards, in our departure from the sim- 
ple life, in our riot of gain and pleasure, we 
have fostered those carnal forces and have pre- 
pared the way. It is for that reason that we 
ought to humble ourselves before God in re- 
pentance. And our repentance will count. 
We can help to prepare the way for peace. 
To-day we pray for peace and long for peace 
that is lasting. My friend, the beginning of 
that must begin with you. If you want to 
count for peace you must become in yourself 



ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 69 

a centre of peace. The peace of God must 
enter your life. You must adopt the stand- 
ards of Christ in your thinking, the spirit of 
Christ in your heart. Your best hope of set- 
ting up the kingdom in Europe is to set up 
the kingdom in your own soul. You must put 
away your selfishness, abandon your sin, bend 
your judgments to the standards of Jesus. 
It is not impossible. By faith in Christ Jesus 
and by the power of His Holy Spirit, it was 
done in Paul and it may be done in you. I 
speak to you, everyone and each one, each by 
each, when I say that so long as you refuse 
to surrender your whole heart to Christ and 
live by His laws, to that degree you are a 
menace to the peace of the world and a bar- 
rier to the progress of the race. 

2. But out of this principle we get a glimpse 
of a great hope. It is this, that God is in "the 
game." He is a member of the race. He is 
in its solidarity. He is not separated from it. 
You wonder what He thinks of it and how He 
bears it. Man, you forget your gospel ! Look 
you at Calvary and you will see what He thinks 
of it and how He bears it. He has put Him- 
self beneath the crushing burden. He has let 



70 WORLD POWER 

the world's great pain press upon His own 
heart. He suffers in it and for it and in His 
suffering he redeems it. He has joined up His 
fortunes with our fortunes. The hazardous 
fortunes of the race are in His hand, and He 
will not suffer them to fail. We shall not ut- 
terly be lost. And in our great Head of the 
race, its true Head, we shall see the gathering, 
some day, of all peoples and nations and kin- 
dreds and tongues in the solid and holy unity 
of a redeemed family, and happy shall we be 
if through Christ we shall be found within their 
midst. 



IV 



A PLACE IN THE SUN: THE GOD 
OF HISTORY 



IV 

A PLACE IN THE SUN: THE GOD 
OE HISTORY, 

Text: — "And I saw an angel standing in the sun." — 
Eevelation 19: 17. 

The phrase that has suggested our subject 
for to-night is one that has been on the lips of 
the German people for the past ten or fifteen 
years. We are not quite certain who coined 
the phrase in the beginning, but it is general- 
ly supposed that it sprang out of the fertile 
brain of the Kaiser himself. Over and over 
again he has repeated it to his people. Over 
and over again the world has been told that 
Germany must have her "place in the sun." 
And not only are we uncertain about its ex- 
act origin, but we are also uncertain about its 
exact meaning. It is one of those subtle phrases 
that expresses the hidden quality of a nation's 
character and unconsciously uncovers the se- 
cret purpose and driving motive that sends 

73 



74 WORLD POWER 

her on her way. There can be little doubt that 
in its first use it simply signified the desire on 
the part of Germany to have an equal chance 
with all the other great nations of the world. 
She wanted the opportunity to develop her 
resources, to perfect her institutions, to expand 
her influence, and to live out the genius of her 
life. There was a sense (though no one else 
could be blamed) in which she was handi- 
capped in the opportunity to live. There can 
be no doubt that in her present form she came 
into the arena at a very late date, when all the 
best opportunities were gone and the place of 
influence held by the older and stronger na- 
tions of the world. She came at a time when 
the national and international institutions 
were more or less settled and the hard and fast 
lines of their development were long and deep- 
ly laid. She came at a time when nearly all 
the other great nations had reached maturity 
or were well upon the way. She came with a 
strong, young, buoyant life, with a rapidly in- 
creasing population at a time when there was 
no place to put it because all the vacant terri- 
tory of the world had been pre-empted by other 
European powers and there was no open door 



A PLACE IN THE SUN 75 

for the colonial expansion of the German race. 
In other words, the other members of the 
European family had basked in the sunshine 
of a great opportunity. They had had their 
share; Germany felt that she had been over- 
shadowed — crowded into the twilight: and 
from this time on she must have an equal 
chance; she must have "a place in the sun." 

But if that was the original idea of the 
phrase it soon took on a dark and sinister 
meaning. Not only did Germany want "a 
place in the sun," but she wanted the most cen- 
traland commanding place of all. She demand- 
ed that she should stand in the centre. The 
full meridian glory must fall on her, and her 
alone. Her shadow would stretch itself across 
the world. If other nations lived at all, they 
must live through sufferance. They must pass 
their days in the shadow of that one great 
figure that claimed the commanding and con- 
spicuous position in the sunlight of civiliza- 
tion. Indeed, she herself would be the sun- 
light of the world. And so what was a fair 
chance passed into an arrogant demand; what 
was a privilege became a right; what was an 
equal share became the whole ownership. All V 



76 WORLD POWER 

else must stand in the shadow. Her motto be- 
came: "Prussia at the head of Germany; Ger- 
many at the head of Europe; Europe at the 
head of the world." To put it briefly, there 
must be one great controlling element in the 
life of mankind, and that one element must be 
the German power. "A place in the sun!" 

Well, our text reminds us that nineteen hun- 
dred years ago in a very striking and beauti- 
ful figure, John the apostle told us about this 
"place in the sun," and who it was that held 
it, and how He secured it, and what He 
achieved through the power that He had 
gained. "I saw an angel standing in the sun." 
In these closing chapters of the Revelation 
there passes before the eyes of John the vision 
of the new heaven and the new earth. He gets 
a glimpse of the perfect civilization that is to 
be. Behind it all and within it and through 
it and dominating all he discerns a power that 
holds the central place, — a power that is the 
guiding and moving spirit of history. "An 
angel standing in the sun!" I do not think we 
are supposed to take John's words in any ht- 
eral sense. The "sun" with him, for the most 
part, is symbolic of the spiritual light and 



A PLACE m THE SUN 77 

glory and blessing attendant on the reign of 
Christ. The "angel," for the most part, is sym- 
bolic of some Divine presence that pervades 
the church, or the Kingdom, or the world, or 
human life. It is a very significant thing that 
close to my text, and in the very next breath, 
and indeed throughout the chapter, that Di- 
vine presence is identified with the radiant Son 
of God. And so when John says that he "saw 
an angel standing in the sun," he means that 
in the world there is a Divine presence out of 
which all its glory springs ; that there is some- 
thing behind the world of matter that we can- 
not see and cannot account for; that beneath 
all the network of law there seems to stand 
in the dignity of omnipotence a something that 
is higher than law; that there is a guiding mind 
in all our history; that there is a commanding 
will in human events; that there is a purpose 
under which life will yield its meaning; that 
in the motion of a butterfly's wings and in the 
mighty cataclysms of the race there is a rea- 
son so pure and great that every event is justi- 
fiable; that history is so religious that it is di- 
vine. In a word, he means that God stands 
at the centre of the imiverse. It is He who 



78 WORLD POWER 

has taken the "place in the sun." His is the 
hidden energy; His is the motive power; He 
is the controlling and guiding mind ; He is the 
distant goal to which all things move and in 
whom all things consist ; He is the 

"One God, one law, one element. 
And one far off Divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 



God in Nature 

When we begin to examine this truth, we 
see at once how clear is its proof in the realm 
of nature. We have all been aware, at least 
at times, that there is something behind the 
beauty and ruggedness, the moods and tem- 
pers of nature that we cannot see, an invisible 
presence that breathes through and breaks out 
from it to impress itself upon our minds. All 
the poets have been conscious of their inability 
to quite define or describe the mystic spirit that 
is there. Their songs have not been strong 
enough or deep enough or subtle enough in 
feeling to catch the liquid melody of a run- 
ning brook. They have never been able to write 
verses that could match "the rhythm of the fall- 



A PLACE IN THE SUN 79 

ing rain." They are helpless to fashion music 
that can approach the majesty of the deep- 
toned thunder. The silences that men create can 
never out-silence in stillness "the pathway of 
the snow." Against the background of light 
there emerges a something ineffably more 
glorious. Within and behind and speaking 
through nature is nature's great infinity, which 
is God. And that is what men like Tennyson 
hint at when in the beauty of a modest flower 
they find themselves confronted by the unex- 
plored depths of a nameless presence. It is 
"the angel in the sun." 

Flower in the crannied wall^ 

I pluck you out of the crannies, 

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand. 

Little flower — but if I could understand 

What you are^ root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. 

God in Human Experience 

Carry this text into the realm of human ex- 
perience and let His saints bear witness how 
in their joys and sorrows, their prosperities 
and adversities, they have been able to trace 
the footsteps of a Presence that ruled and 



80 WORLD POWER 

overruled, that guided and controlled, and even 
unveiled His face through the mantle of the 
darkest cloud. Hear the Psalmist say: "It is 
good for me that I have been afflicted that I 
might learn thy statutes. Before I was af- 
flicted I went astray ; but now have I kept thy 
word." What does this mean if not that this 
man found God in all his life, transmuting 
even the darkest sorrow into the Divinest bless- 
ing. Hear Paul, beaten, stoned, imprisoned, 
shipwrecked, robbed of friends, home, com- 
forts — hear Paul say: "But I would have you 
understand, brethren, that the things which 
happened unto me have fallen out rather unto 
the furtherance of the gospel ; so that my bonds 
in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in 
all other places." To Paul there was a Divine 
purpose even in his chains. Or hear Frances 
Ridley Havergal, from a bed of sickness, with 
not a moment's surcease of pain, say : 

I take this pain. Lord Jesus, from Thine own hand, 

The strength to bear it bravely Thou wilt command. 
****** 

'Tis Thy dear hand, O Saviour, that presseth sore, 

The hand that bears the nail-prints for evermore. 

And now beneath its shadow, hidden by Thee, 
The pressure only tells me Thou lovest me! 



A PLACE IN THE SUN 81 

These are the glimpses of those who have read 
the secret meaning of human life, who have 
learned to know that "all things work to- 
gether for good to those who love the Lord," 
who with eyes that were cleansed of the dust 
of earth and deepened in spiritual penetra- 
tion have seen the vision of an "angel stand- 
ing in the sun." 

God in History 

Take with you this truth out into the wider 
tracts of the history of the race, and its lines 
are writ so large that "he who runs may read." 
I do not deny that many a man at many a time 
has found it hard to trace the footsteps of God 
in the ebbing and flowing of the human prog- 
ress. So dark, so forbidding, so puzzling have 
been the prospect and the retrospect alike that 
men have been led to ask, "Is there any God at 
all? Is there any guiding mind? Is there any 
dominating will? Is there any loving heart? 
Is there any holy end? Is there any angel in 
the sun?" To all these fear-born questions 
the long verdict of history gives only one re- 
ply — there is ! Even a passing glance at a few 



82 WORLD POWER 

of the great turning points of the race will 
serve to make that clear. Never was there a 
day so dark in the history of Israel as the day 
of the Exile. The wistful home hunger of the 
patriot was eating out their hearts. Their 
beautiful Jerusalem was in ruins, their tem- 
ple desecrated, their walls battered down, the 
ploughshare of the conqueror had gone over 
the ground on which their homes had stood. 
And they themselves had been driven away 
from their native land, away to the low, wide 
plains about Babylon, and there were no moun- 
tains as at home, to break the long weary mo- 
notony of the skyline and speak to them of the 
everlasting God who was round about His peo- 
ple, and there were no dashing, sparkling 
mountain streams to sing the message of His 
care. It was little wonder that after their fit- 
ful attempts to cheer their hopeless and deject- 
ed spirits they "hanged their harps upon the 
willows," for "how shall we sing the Lord's 
song," said they, in a strange and captive land? 
Yet history has justified it now as faith justi- 
fied it long since. It proved to be the salva- 
tion of Israel. In that experience they were 
cleansed and chastened. In that experience 



A PLACE IN THE SUN 83 

they came to a new recognition of God. 
Through that experience they were prepared 
to play their part in the great scheme of re- 
demption to which they were so vitally impor- 
tant in the purposes of God. And if you want 
to see further how God can step into history, 
recall the instrument by which He broke the 
power of Babylon and set His people free. 
Much is said to-day about the strange alliance 
between civilized England and so-called semi- 
barbarous Russia. It is not the first time that 
Jehovah has taken a strange weapon to fight 
His battles. In the case of Israel He laid hold 
of a pagan people. He summoned Cyrus, a 
pagan king, a leader of a nation who were not 
Jehovah-worshippers, "a ravenous bird from 
the East," as Isaiah called him, and for the 
time being he became the sword of vengeance 
in the hand of that angel that standeth in the 
sun. 

Or take a second instance. Perhaps the 
mightiest shock that Europe yet has known 
was felt in the downfall of the Roman Empire. 
When the disaster came, it was thought that 
the gods were angry and that Christianity, 
newly accepted in the Empire, had proved a 



84 WORLD POWER 

failure. But in that dark day Augustine 
wrote his famous treatise on "The City of 
God," in which he proved the reverse. It was 
the clearing" of the foundations for the build- 
ing of a nobler structure. It was the Eternal 
Builder sweeping away the debris that the 
Eternal City — the true Eternal City — might 
rise. Out of that cataclysm came a new lib- 
erty for the individual, the opening of new 
doorways for the doctrine of the Christ, and 
the assertion of those eternal principles which 
underlie the whole superstructure of our free 
institutions. And in that turning point of his- 
tory one can discern again the overshadowing 
presence of that One who sets the bounds on 
the ambitions of men, and orders all things 
after the counsels of His own will. "And 
now," says Kingsley, speaking of that Gothic 
invasion under which Rome went down, "and 
now, gentlemen, was this vast campaign 
fought without a general? If Trafalgar could 
not be won without the mind of a Nelson, or 
Waterloo without the mind of a Wellington, 
was there no one mind to lead these innumer- 
able armies, on whose success depended the fu- 
ture of the whole human race? Did no one 



A PLACE IN THE SUN 85 

marshal them in that impregnable convex 
front, from the Euxine to the North Sea? No 
one guide them to the two great strategic cen- 
tres of the Black Forest and Trieste ? No one 
cause them, blind barbarians without maps or 
science, to follow those rules of war without 
which victory in a protracted struggle is im- 
possible, and by the pressure of the Huns be- 
hind, force on their flagging myriads to an 
enterprise which their simplicity fancied at first 
beyond the power of mortal men? Believe it 
who will ; I cannot. 

"But while I believe that not a stone or a 
handful of mud gravitates into its place with- 
out the will of God ; that it was ordained ages 
since into what particular spot each grain of 
gold should be washed down from an Austra- 
lian quartz reef, that a certain man might find 
it at a certain moment and crisis of his life — 
if I be superstitious enough (as, thank God, 
I am) to hold that creed, shall I not believe 
that though this great war had no general upon 
earth, it may have had a general in Heaven; 
and that in spite of all their sins the hosts of 
our forefathers were the hosts of God." 

Or take another notable instance. One hun- 



86 WORLD POWETl 

dred years ago the storm of the French Revo- 
lution broke over Europe, yet the lapse of one 
hundred years has enabled us to see with clearer 
vision that it marked the downfall of an old 
system that gave way to the rising of a new. 
There was an angel in the sun. God compelled 
events to serve Him. How wonderful it is 
that at the very moment when these old sys- 
tems were crashing into dust He was prepar- 
ing and initiating the new movements that 
would bless the centuries. In the midst of 
that storm came the modern missionary cru- 
sade when William Carey led the attack of 
Christianity against the paganism of India; 
in the midst of that time of stress was initiated 
the great Sunday School movement; in the 
midst of the same stormy days emerged the 
Bible Society that has sown the seed of the 
Scriptures broadcast throughout the world. 
It was evident to all who had eyes to see that 
there was an angel in the sun. Writing of 
Waterloo, which was the culmination of that 
gigantic struggle, Victor Hugo says, "This 
madness, this terror, this falling to ruins of 
the highest bravery which ever astonished his- 
tory, can that be without cause? No, the shad- 



A PLACE IN THE SUN 87 

ow of an enormous right hand rested on 
Waterloo. It is the day of destiny. A power 
above man controlled that day. Hence the 
loss of mind in dismay; hence all these great 
souls yielding up their swords. Those who had 
conquered Europe fell to the ground having 
nothing more to say or to do, feeling a terri- 
ble presence in the darkness. That day the 
perspective of the human race changed. Wat- 
erloo is the hinge of the nineteenth century. 
The disappearance of the great man was neces- 
sary for the advent of the great century. One, 
to whom there is no reply, took it in charge. 
The panic of heroes is explained. In the battle 
of Waterloo there is more than a cloud, there 
is a meteor. God passed over it." What is 
this but the attempt of a brilliant man to say 
what John taught us long ago, that there is 
"an angel standing in the sun." 

The Two Lessons 

And now with that truth firmly established 
there are two lessons we must learn: 

1. We must learn to take a long view of his- 
tory, God moves across the ages with stately 



88 WORLD POWER 

step, and they who would understand Him 
must read His records with the light of two 
eternities upon them. Emerson was fond of 
saying that the supreme lesson of life is learn- 
ing "what the centuries say against the hours." 
With Jehovah a thousand years is as a day 
and a day as a thousand years. We are too 
near to the great events of to-day to be sure 
that we read them aright. The roar of cannon 
deafens us; the dust of battle blinds us; the 
rush of events dazzles us; and the passion of 
the hour carries us by storm. Momentary vic- 
tory may not mean success ; momentary defeat 
may not mean failure. Above the mighty 
drama is God. He has taken His place in the 
sun. It is occupied by no other. At times it 
may seem otherwise, but it is not so. 

"Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but 

record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems 

and the Word; 
Truth forever on the scaiFold, Wrong forever on the 

throne — 
Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the 

dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above 

His own." 



A PLACE IN THE SUN 89 

2. Again let us learn to take a clear view of 
Christ in relation to the scheme of life. He is 
the angel that standeth in the sun. He is to 
us the manifestation of the Divine presence, 
"the effulgence of God's glory from the ex- 
press image of His person." All things re- 
volve about Him. All things must exist for 
Him. He must reign until He has put all 
enemies under His feet. At the very darkest 
hour of all He stepped into human history in 
the flesh. He is there, as John tells us, by the 
right of His cross. He has on His vesture and 
on His thigh a name written. King of Kings 
and Lord of Lords. He is the centre of all 
created things. He is the one who will con- 
trol. Around Him the nations must bow in 
submission. Make no mistake. It is not Ger- 
many or another who will hold the place in 
the sun. It is He whose right it is to rule. It 
is He who has the last word of life. We stand 
or fall by Him and our relation to Him. 

"He hath sounded forth the trumpet 
That shall never call retreat. 

He is sifting out the hearts of men. 
Before His judgment seat. 

O ! be swift my soul to meet Him; 
Be jubilant, my feet, 

For God is marching on." 



THE DAY! THE DAY! : THE 
NEMESIS OF JUSTICE 



V 

THE DAY! THE DAY! : THE 
NEMESIS OF JUSTICE 

Text: — "Woe unto you that desire the day of ike 
Lord: to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is 
darkness and not light." — Amos 5: 18. 

"The day!" "The day of the Lord!" "The 
day of the Lord is darkness and not light." 
These are ominous words and strangely mod- 
ern as they drift across the twenty-seven cen- 
turies that lie between. They were uttered by 
Amos at a critical hour in the history of Israel. 
It was a time of impending national danger. 
He himself tells us that the vision came "two 
years before the earthquake," and at once you 
realize that he is thinking not so much of any 
quaking of earth as some great cataclysm of 
the nation. The truth is that the storm of 
war was about to break over Israel. Amos 
knows that it must come. His own heart tells 
him so. His God tells him so. Events teU him 
so. The signs have been ripening these many 
years. The sound of the conflict is already in 

93 



94 WORLD POWER 

his ears. It is coming in the marching hosts 
of Assyria, who have long been preparing for 
the fray. Already the force of their mighty 
hand has been felt in the West, and Amos, who 
knew how to read the signs of the times, knew 
that it meant the day of sorrow for Israel, an 
Israel who by her sin deserved the wrath and 
the justice of God. 

Besides, it was not Israel alone that would 
be involved. Once the blow was struck it 
would smite the whole circle of nations — Syria, 
Philistia, Phoenicia, Edom, Ammon, Moab, — 
north, south, east, west, the rage of battle 
would spread. And before he announces what 
the doom of Israel would be, he takes a few 
moments to make it clear why the sword of 
justice would fall on the nations round about. 
There is something tremendously modern 
about this, something that silences all the 
boast about the progress of our civilization. 
Syria will be punished, says the prophet, be- 
cause she has been guilty of wanton cruelty in 
war, cruelty that Amos can only compare with 
the driving of sharp and heavy threshing 
boards over the ripened corn; Philistia and 
Phoenicia will be punished because of their 



THE DAY! THE DAY! 95 

heartless slave-trade that stirred the indigna- 
tion of God; Edom will be punished because 
of her pitiless and untiring hatred of Israel, 
a hatred that was nursed by day and nour- 
ished by night; Ammon, because of their un- 
speakable barbarity to women in a war whose 
only justification was the extension of terri- 
tory; Moab, because of the insolence with 
which she desecrated the holy places of the 
land and insulted the pieties universally cher- 
ished toward the dead. The world around 
Israel was a hard and cruel world that tram- 
pled remorselessly upon the fundamental sanc- 
tities of life and liberty, and to a man of the 
spirit of Amos it seemed only right that they 
in turn should be trampled under the iron 
heel of the Assyrian horde. 

The Case of Israel 

Up to that point the nation listened with 
delight to their prophet. The doom of the 
other nations satisfied their complacent and 
vindictive spirits. Let it fall; they deserved 
it; it could not come too soon. The day! The 
day! Would that it were here! they would 
welcome it. These decadent and barlbarous 



96 WORLD POWER 

nations must go down! The day! The day! 
But swift as lightning Amos turns upon them. 
They too shall be caught in the storm. They 
thought themselves guiltless but they were not. 
They boasted of their pedigree as the chosen 
people of God. They gloried in a sort of Di- 
vine right that sheltered them. They regarded 
themselves as the called of God and therefore 
exempt from His wrath. Their land was pros- 
perous and they took their prosperity as a sign 
of the Divine favor. But their life was reek- 
ing with sin. They had trampled upon the 
poor; they had laid heavy burdens of taxa- 
tion on the people; they had turned the sanc- 
tuaries into places of lust and merchandise; 
they had poisoned justice at the fountains of 
the nation; they had developed a class of the 
rich and powerful that ruled the nation with 
an iron hand. For all this the day of reckon- 
ing would come. It would be a day of destiny. 
It would be the awful havoc of war. He 
warns them that (5:3) 

"The city that marched forth a thousand 
Shall come back with a hundred, 
And the city that marched forth a hundred 
Shall come back with but ten." 



THE DAY I THE DAY! 97 

It would be a day of terror and desperation. 
It would be as if a man fled from a lion and 
lo! a bear met him, or escaping from the lion 
and the bear he is met by a serpent that bites. 
O Israel, you have hailed the day of doom for 
others, but it will prove to be the day of doom 
for you! O Israel, you have boasted the day 
of defeat for others, but it will be the day of 
defeat for you! The day! The day! you say. 
"Woe unto you that desire the day of the 
Lord; to what end is it for you? the day of the 
Lord is darkness and not light." 

The Case of Germany 

No one can miss the very striking parallel 
between these words and that thing that has 
been cherished for twenty-five years at the 
heart of a great and powerful people to-day. 
It is a well-known fact that for these many 
years in the officers' mess in the army and navy 
of Germany there has been drunk a toast to 
"The Day! The Day!"— the day when the 
dogs of war would be slipped in Europe, the 
day when the doom would fall on all Ger- 
many's rivals, and on some occasions at least 
the hope was emphasized by smashing the 



98 WORLD POWER 

glasses from which the toast was drunk, as 
symbolic of the blow by which they would 
smash Britain when "the day" would come. 
Their prosperity they took as a sign of the 
Divine favor; their pedigree and culture as a 
sign of the Divine sanction. To prepare for 
"the day" they trampled on the poor; they 
laid heavy burdens of taxation on the people; 
they developed a class of the rich and power- 
ful that ruled the nation with an iron hand; 
they poisoned the fountain springs of justice; 
they fanned the popular mind into a flame of 
war; they impregnated the soil of their na- 
tional life with the seeds of hatred, suspicion, 
and strife. Boasting and toasting for the 
day, lying and spying for the day, dreaming 
and scheming for the day, sowing and grow- 
ing for the day, wronging and longing for 
the day — ^until the conscience of the world pro- 
tested in the name of God, and rose up to 
say, "You have hailed the day of doom for 
others, it will be the day of doom for you. 
You have hastened the day of blood for others, 
it will be the day of blood for you. You have 
boasted the day of defeat for others, it will 
be the day of defeat for you. 'The Day! The 



THE DAY! THE DAY! 99 

Day' you say. Let it come. It cannot come 
too soon, would that it were here. 'Ah, woe 
unto you that desire the day of the Lord; to 
what end is it for you? the day of the Lord 
is darkness and not light.' " 

The Spiritual Teaching 

And now from these two events so far apart 
in point of time, so close together in charac- 
ter, there emerge a few great truths we do well 
to heed to-day : 

1. The Inexorable Working of the Moral 
Law. — And first of all we are impressed with 
the inexorableness and certainty of the work- 
ing of the moral law. Over against the sin is 
"the day." There is the inevitable day of the 
Lord, the day of reckoning. Israel imagined 
that she might escape the doom that would fall 
on others though she shared their sin. But 
there was not and is not any escape. There is 
nothing surer than that. In the moral world 
the laws never fail. As Plato says, the sin and 
its effects are "rivetted together." Certain 
effects follow certain causes; certain fruits 
will come from certain roots. It cannot be 



100 WORLD POWER 

otherwise. "Men do not gather grapes from 
thorns nor figs from thistles." "Be not de- 
ceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a 
man soweth that shall he also reap." That is 
a truth that is not only written in the Bible 
but written indelibly on the conscience of man. 
We have put it into our proverbs. "Our sins," 
we say, "come home to roost," and in that we 
are not mistaken. "The mills of the gods grind 
slowly, but they grind exceeding small," and 
in that we are not mistaken. Said an oppressed 
woman to Richelieu, "God does not always 
pay at the end of the week but He pays." Ah, 
there it is! He pays! He pays! In the old 
Greek mythology this sure retribution was rep- 
resented and worshipped as a goddess. Her 
name was Nemesis — hence my subject, "The 
Nemesis of Justice." And she is always rep- 
resented with a measuring rod to indicate that 
justice will measure the exact reward; she is 
represented with sword and scourge to indi- 
cate that justice will administer the punishment 
that is due ; she is represented with wings, driv- 
ing in a chariot drawn by swift griffins, to indi- 
cate the swiftness with which justice will fol- 
low on all the wrongdoing of men. 



THE DAY! THE DAY! 101 

Ah, when will we learn this great truth that 
there can never be any harmless infraction of 
the moral law? The nation that breaks it shall 
suffer; so also the man. No lapse of time can 
ever cheat that unf or getting* nemesis of jus- 
tice. No stretch of space can divide you from 
the long arm of that moral law. As Carlyle 
says: "It would seem that the unjust thing 
has no friend in Heaven, and a majority 
against it on Earth ; nay that it at bottom has 
all men for its enemies ; that it may take shelter 
m this fallacy and then in that, but will be 
hunted from fallacy to fallacy till it find no 
fallacy to shelter in any more but must march 
and go elsewhither; — ^that, in a word, it ought 
to prepare incessantly for decent departure, 
before indecent departure, ignominious drum- 
ming out, nay savage smiting out and burning 
out, overtake it !" 

Remembering that, we will cease to wonder 
that this war is upon the nations. It is the 
natural harvest of a seed that has been assidu- 
ously sown. It is the inevitable fruitage of 
the German philosophy and some of the Ger- 
man theology, the German ambition and the 
German hate. How could it be otherwise? 



102 WORLD POWER 

They that sow the wind must reap the whirl- 
wind. For my own part, when I think of the 
seed that has been sown, the spirit that has been 
cherished, the teaching that has been rife 
among" the nations, and Germany in particular, 
it would have seemed a breakdown in the whole 
moral order of God's economy if the harvest 
had not come in just the way it has. 

2. Tlie Surprises of Judgment — Note again 
the great surprise that often accompanies the 
outworking of the moral law. "The day of the 
Lord is darkness and not light." Woe unto 
you who call for the day! It will not be the 
kind of day you think it will be. Instead of 
light, darkness ; instead of .hope, despair ; in- 
stead of victory, defeat. For twenty-five years 
Germany has called for "the day" — thinldng 
of it only as a day of power, of victory, of 
easy triumph, and the humiliation of every foe. 
I would not be foolish enough .to offer any 
opinion on the status of the fighting thus far, 
but it is safe to say that already "the day" has 
not proved to be all that Germany anticipated. 
And this is not the place nor the hour, nor is it 
ever the place or the hour, to say one boastful 



THE DAY! THE DAY! 103 

word, but if this great struggle ends as we 
hope it shall, as we believe it ought if there be 
a God in Heaven, if it ends in the only way in 
which the civilized world can afford to have it 
end, then "the day" will prove to be a great 
surprise to the proud ambitions of the German 
power. 

"But after the Day there's a price to pay 
For the sleepers under the sod, 
And He whom you mocked for many a day- 
Listen and hear what He has to say: 
'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' 
What can you say to God?" 

But it is not upon the conscience of Ger- 
many that I can hope to write that word. A 
nearer duty lies at hand — ^to write that word 
on your conscience now. We have a kind of 
easy way of thinking of sin, confusing it with 
good, supposing we could sow the seed of sin 
and from our sowing reap the harvest of righ- 
teousness. My friends, that harvest will sur- 
prise us. You remember the guilty king in 
"Hamlet," guilty of the murder of his brother, 
praying to Heaven and trying to assure him- 
self that all may yet be well: 



104 WORLD POWER 

"What if this cursed hand 
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood — 
Is there not rain enough in the sweet Heavens 
To wash it white as snow?" 

And yet he knows there is no prayer that he 
can offer Hkely to be heard in those "sweet 
heavens" since 

"I am still possessed 
Of those effects for which I did the murder: 
My crown^ mine own ambition, and my queen." 

And then with an insight into the laws of God 
hke the deep vision of a saint, the conscience- 
stricken king is made to say: 

"In the corrupted currents of this world. 
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice; 

but 'tis not so above; 

There is no shuffling — there the action lies 
In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled. 
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults. 
To give in evidence." 

But why should I seek an illustration of this 
when our Lord Himself pulled aside the veil 
of the future and glimpsed for us the surprise 
that shall fall upon men in that great day. 
"Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or 
athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in 



THE DAY I THE DAY! 105 

prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then 
shall He answer them, saying, Verily I say 
unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of 
the least of these, ye did it not to me." For 
these men the day of the Lord will be darkness 
and not light. 

This is the truth we must fearlessly face in 
our own hearts. There are some who in their 
thought of "that day" think of it only as a 
day of light. Are you quite sure it will prove 
to be so, and is your confidence well founded? 
It is an easy matter to get ourselves into the 
habit of thinking that death can only bring us 
good. We convince ourselves that somehow 
we shall "muddle safely through." We talk 
of death as a rest, a sleep that we shall wel- 
come. We say that "in the grave we end the 
heartache and the thousand natural shocks that 
flesh is heir to." We speak as though the tide 
that bears us on must inevitably bear us into 
bliss. We say "to die is gain," forgetting that 
the man who said that was able first to say, "to 
me to live is Christ." It is the old philosophy 
of the self-satisfied — the philosophy of the 
Rubaiyat, "God's a good fellow and 'twill all 
be well." But life and destiny do not rest on 



106 WORLD POWER 

such a foundation as that. Let us examine the 
ground of our confidence, if confidence we 
have. Let us forget, for the moment, Ger- 
many and her "day" and think of our "day," 
near or distant, who can tell? Let us see that 
no dark surprise awaits us in that day. And 
the "day of darkness" it will surely be unless 
we come to it in Christ, yielded to Him, for- 
given through Him, cleansed by His blood, and 
adopted into His family of grace. Without 
Him to plead our cause we shall be poor indeed, 
and that day will not be a glad looking-for- 
ward-to of glory but a "fearful looking-for- 
ward-to of judgment and fiery indignation" — 
a day of darkness and not light. 

3. The Necessity of Atonement — There is 
something in this great retribution falling 
upon sin that helps us to see the necessity of 
that Atonement which Christ made upon the 
cross. We find it difficult at times to see the 
need of it, and why "it pleased the Lord to 
bruise Him," and how "he was wounded for 
our transgressions and bruised for our iniqui- 
ties." But if history has made one thing 
plainer than another it is this — that sin must 
be punished. It is a part of the great order of 



THE DAY! THE DAY! 107 

a moral world. It is a necessity to which God 
Himself is subject. To deal with sin in any 
other way than this would be a violation of 
the order He Himself established and a con- 
tradiction of His own nature. Well do we 
know that we had laid up for ourselves a "day 
of darkness" in our sin. Well do we know 
that if that sin was atoned for some one must 
step into the darkness ; well do we know that it 
was not we who did that. It was Christ who 
took our place. That is the meaning of Cal- 
vary. It is the day of the world's darkness 
borne by One in whom the darkness spent it- 
self. The blow fell on Him ; the judgment was 
visited on Him; the sword went through His 
heart. He was made sin for us, though He 
knew no sin. We know not (and thank God 
need never know) how deep was that darkness, 
only we know that to Him the Father's face 
was obscured. In the desolation of that hour 
He cried, "My God, My God, why hast thou 
'forsaken me?" My friend. He entered that 
darkness that you might enter into light. He 
bowed His head beneath that shame that you 
might lift your head in glory. He bore the 



108 WORLD POWER 

burden of that Cross that you might wear the 
splendour of that crown. 

With this majestic promise then I close — 
majestic in its possibilities of salvation. Are 
you thinking of "the day! the day!" with some 
deep foreboding in your heart that all may not 
be well? What if it were possible to put the 
day of darkness forever behind you ! What if 
you were able to turn your face upon the shad- 
ow of your sin and turn your face to light that 
is undimmed. And this can you do. Listen! 
*'He that heareth my word and believeth on 
Him that sent me hath everlasting life and shall 
not come unto judgment, but is passed from 
death into life." "There is therefore now no 
condemnation — no judgment — ^to them that 
are in Christ Jesus." Even here and now 
where you sit you may see the passing of "the 
day" if you will but open your heart to Him. 
In a very few minutes this congregation will 
be scattered far and wide. Would that I 
might cease speaking to the congregation and 
take hold of the hand of some man, glad to es- 
cape from the condemnation of sin. Hast thou 
seen the vision of righteousness? Hast thou 
heard the music from the upper reaches of life ? 



THE DAY! THE DAY! 109 

Hast thou longed for a sense of peace and the 
assurance that you were right with God? Come 
and you may have what your heart longs for. 
He will pardon; He will break the tyrant's 
power; He will dissipate the darkness and in 
the radiance of His love you need have no fear 
of the night for in Him the day of darkness is 
past and the true light shineth in the soul. 



VI 

A SCRAP OF PAPER: THE 
MORALITY OF NATIONS 



VI 

A SCRAP OF PAPER: THE 
MORALITY OF NATIONS 

Text: — "Shall he breaJc the covenant and be deliv- 
ered? . . As I live, surely mine oath that he hath 
despised and my covenant that he hath broken, even it 
•will I recompense upon his own head." — Ezekiel 17: 15, 
19. 

It is a very common saying that "history re- 
peats itself" and even a casual glance at the 
past centuries will show you how the wheel re- 
volves and the experiences of the nations are 
reproduced again and again. Striking indeed 
was the parallel we noted last Sunday evening 
between the case of Israel that called for "The 
Day! The Day!" little dreaming that "The day 
of the Lord would be darkness and not light," 
and the case of Germany twenty-seven centu- 
ries later that toasted "The Day! The Day!" 
little thinking that it may prove for her the day 
not of "world power" but "downfall." Hardly 
less striking is the parallel we find in our text 

113 



114 WORLD POWER 

to-night. As far back as six hundred years be- 
fore Christ here was a nation that looked upon 
her treaties as "a scrap of paper," and, regard- 
less of honor, violated her pledged and plighted 
word. There is no need that I should review 
this long story of Judah's perfidy. Suffice it 
to say that Zedekiah and his counsellors had 
bound themselves as the representatives of the 
kingdom to "serve the King of Babylon." The 
honor of the nation was pledged to that. Under 
a solemn compact they had agreed also to en- 
ter into no alliance with Egypt against Baby- 
lon. But in a secret and treacherous hour Ju- 
dah tore her treaty to shreds. For the sake of 
a military advantage that might be gained she 
sent her ambassadors to Egypt to secure the 
support of the infantry and cavalry of Pha- 
raoh. Her pledge to Babylon was nothing, her 
honor nothing, her promise nothing. But it 
proved to be a gross miscalculation. Egypt 
was not able to furnish the expected help. 
"Neither shall Pharaoh with his mighty army 
and great company make for him in the war by 
casting up mounds, and building forts, to cut 
off many persons" (17: 17) . The treacherous 
hopes of Judah fell to the ground. And then 



A SCKAP OF PAPER 115 

the prophet Ezekiel pointed out that for all this 
treachery and for the violation of her honor 
there are two results that will surely come. 
The first is that the violation of their word to 
men will be regarded by Jehovah as the viola- 
tion of their word to Him and consequently 
His vengeance will visit them. The second re- 
sult is that on the ground where they violated 
their honor, on that very ground would they 
be humbled before the eyes of men. "As I 
live, saith the Lord God, surely in the place 
where the king dwelleth that made him king, 
whose oath he despised, and whose covenant 
he brake, even with him in the midst of Baby- 
lon he shall die" (17:16). 

The Modern Perfidy 

Leave behind you now the twenty-five cen- 
turies that lie between and you can read again 
the same story in the history of the German 
Empire to-day. In company with the other 
great nations of Europe, Germany put her 
signature to a solemu compact that guaranteed 
the neutrality of Belgium for all the future. 
That pledge goes back as far as 1839. From 



116 WORLD POWER 

time to time throughout the past century it was 
confirmed. Germany's honor was behind it; 
behind it also her pledged word. Prince Bis- 
marck recognized the binding character of that 
treaty in 1870 and in the Franco-Prussian war 
the neutrality of Belgium was observed. But 
for the sake of a supposed military advantage 
in the present crisis Germany tore her treaty 
to shreds. It was only "a scrap of paper." To 
strike a swift blow at France it was necessary 
to pass over Belgian soil. In the presence of 
that selfish purpose all her honor was thrown 
to the winds. In the words of the German 
Chancellor, "Necessity knows no law." Right 
or wrong "he must hack his way through." 
With a calm defiance of all decency and honor, 
he says, "This is an infraction of international 
law. We are compelled to over-rule the legiti- 
mate protests of the Luxemburg and Belgian 
governments. We shall repair the wrong when 
our military aims have been achieved." Mili- 
tary aims then annul treaties; militaiy neces- 
sity knows no law ; the slaughter of thousands 
of innocent and peaceable citizens and the de- 
struction of medieval monuments constitute a 
wrong that is to be repaired, as if that kind of 



A SCRAP OF PAPER 117 

thing can ever be atoned for by any nation un- 
der the sun. I need hardly remind you how the 
parallel holds again. That act on the part of 
Germany was a gross miscalculation. By that 
act she enlisted against her the moral sentiment 
of the whole civilized world. By that act she 
received a check at the hands of the brave Bel- 
gian army before Liege that forbade her swift 
blow at France and threw the whole plan of 
her campaign out of joint. In the saloon of 
the "Royal Edward" on my return from Eng- 
land this summer I listened with profound in- 
terest to a group of ten or twelve Americans 
as they reviewed the miscalculations of Ger- 
many in a stroke to which she attached so much. 
She had miscalculated on Sweden, which she 
hoped would furnish a quarter of a million of 
men to strike Russia on the north; miscalcu- 
lated on the spirit and strength of France; 
miscalculated on the courage of Belgium; 
miscalculated on the rapidity of Russian mobi- 
lization; miscalculated on the spirit of In- 
dia and Ireland; miscalculated above all 
on the moral sense of the British people. 
In a somewhat surprised and complaining 



118 WORLD POWER 

way the German Chancellor declared, "Just 
for a word — neutrality — a word which in 
war-time had so often been disregarded — 
just for a scrap of paper Britain was go- 
ing to make war." Ah ! that was the greatest 
miscalculation of all. And somehow we can- 
not but think that the two dark results that 
fell upon Judah will fall upon Germany, viz. : 
that the violation of her pledged word to Bel- 
gium will be regarded by the Eternal Jehovah 
as a violation of her pledged word to Him 
as a Christian nation and, again, that on that 
very ground of Belgium where she violated her 
honor — on that very ground shall she be hum- 
bled before the eyes of the whole world. 

Here then is raised for us the supreme ques- 
tion of truth and honor in our relation to men 
and our relation to God. It is along these two 
lines I can best crystallize my message to- 
night: first, our pledged word in relation to 
men; second, our pledged word in relation to 
God. Upon our observance of the first rests 
the whole structure of society; upon our ob- 
servance of the second depends the pure es- 
sence of all religion. 



A SCRAP OF PAPER 119 

Our Pledged Word in Relation to Men 

First of all, then we observe that the great 
law of honor holds in the individual life between 
man and man. It is no light thing for a man 
to give his word in solemn promise to another. 
His word is the expression of his personality. 
It is not something that is separated from 
himself. When a man gives his word he gives 
himself; when he breaks his word he breaks 
himself. Likewise his name represents him- 
self. In the olden days a man's name was the 
expression of his character. The name Jacob 
means "a trickster" and so Jacob proved to be. 
Abraham was called Abraham because Abra- 
ham means "the father of a multitude" and 
so Abraham was in the purposes of God. 
Jesus was called Jesus because that name 
means Saviour and it was written of Him, 
"Thou shalt call His name Jesus for He shall 
save His people from their sins." And 
though we do not follow the custom now, a 
man's name is the expression of liimself . It is 
no light thing, therefore, to put your name to 
a bond, and unless a man is released honorably 
and willingly from it he must endeavor so far 



120 WORLD POWER 

as in him lies to redeem the honor of his name. 
And, thank God, this country is not without 
some shining examples of men who were legal- 
ly discharged from some obligation they con- 
tracted for the sake of another, yet felt 
themselves morally bound to discharge it, and 
discharge it they did because their honor was 
involved and because they scorned to pass on 
to their children and their children's children a 
name that bore a stain. 

So also does the same law of honor hold in 
the corporate dealings of men. In the case of 
the employer and employee there are obliga- 
tions implied in their contract with one another 
as sacred as the vows one makes to God. The 
moral import is sacred though the written seal 
is not put. upon it. It is because this has been 
disregarded on both sides at times that the 
troubles rise in the labor world. When a 
workman contracts as he does to give his time 
and effort and skill to his employer for a cer- 
tain period of each day and squanders his time, 
or withholds that effort, or skimps his work, or 
puts less than his best skill into it, he has torn 
up the solemn compact to which his honor is 
attached and counts it no more than "a scrap 



A SCRAP OF PAPER 121 

of paper." And when an employer contracts 
as he does to protect his workman from dan- 
ger, to advance his interests, to justly recom- 
pense his labors, to stand by him in the time of 
stress, and fails to do these things, he too has 
torn up his solemn compact to which his honor 
is attached and counts it no more than "a scrap 
of paper." It will not be until we have recog- 
nized this fact that we shall see an end of some 
of those gigantic conflicts that shake the labor 
world from end to end. 

What holds for the individual and the com- 
munity binds itself also upon the nation. In 
deed if not in word we have tried to demon- 
strate that the nation has no soul. It is a 
common enough saying that "corporations 
have no souls" and we have set about to prove 
it. We treat them at times as if they were 
beyond the pale of morals. Many a man who 
would scorn to cheat another will not hesitate 
to cheat a railway of his fare. Many a man 
who would blush to rob a merchant will with 
an easy conscience rob the government at the 
customs house. But the code of morals that 
Jesus shaped for individual honor is binding 
on national honor too. There is such a thing 



122 WORLD POWER 

as the breakdown of national morality. There 
are some nations that come to be trusted and 
some are regarded with suspicion and fear. 
Take the case of Germany. There has been a 
widespread mistrust of German diplomacy. 
The world has not forgotten how Bismarck 
edited the famous Ems telegram in 1870 — 
changing it in two words so that it was de- 
signed to injure the pride of the French people 
and inflame the French spirit till it kindled 
into war. That seed is flourishing to-day, in 
the breaking of treaties, in the rending of cove- 
nants, in the utter disregard of all the accepted 
rules of warfare, and it may be traced back 
to the Bismarckian standards that stamped 
themselves upon the nation's life. In the pres- 
ent instance, German perfidy is all the more 
glaring and dastardly because it is so selfish 
and because it was directed against a small and 
defenceless people. I need not remind you 
that if such standards obtain civilization will 
be at an end. It is a Satanic sneer hurled with 
fell purpose into the midst of human life. So- 
ciety under such a code would be swiftly re- 
duced to ruins. Rather than live under such a 
code let us perish. And there is something to 



A SCRAP OF PAPER 123 

me superbly grand in the figure of Britain's 
great Prime Minister standing in the Guild- 
hall in London, as with tense, white face he 
declared that he would rather see England 
blotted out from the pages of history than to 
see her remain as "a silent witness to the tragic 
triumph of force over law and freedom." 

OuE Pledged Word in Relation to God 

Binding as our covenants are which are 
made with men they are not more so than the 
covenants that we make with God. He is 
pleased indeed to regard our sacred cove- 
nants with one another as in some sense made 
with Himself. He is the fountain of all truth 
and honor and any violation of truth in the 
whole wide universe is a blow aimed at the 
sanctity of the Eternal government among 
men. There are many ways in which as a na- 
tion we have made our covenant with God. 
We repeatedly call ourselves a Christian peo- 
ple, which implies at least that we have accept- 
ed the moral standards and spiritual teachings 
of Christ. Think for a moment of the tacit 
covenants into which we have entered in the 



124 WORLD POWER 

phrases and mottoes in which we crystallize the 
sentiment of the nation. Never before per- 
haps in the life time of any one here have we 
sung so often and so fervently our national 
anthem: 

God save our gracious King, 
Long live our noble King, 

God save the King! 
Send him victorious, 
Happy and glorious. 
Long to reign over us: 

God save the King! 

Do we stop to realize what is implied in 
that? It is our covenant which as a nation we 
have made with High Heaven on behalf of 
our King. In that we confess that the Royal 
throne stands or falls by the will of God; that 
victory or defeat turns upon His word; that 
the very life of our sovereign is in His hands. 
Yet there are times when in the swagger of 
our power we leave God out of our reckoning 
and in that hour we have torn our covenant to 
shreds and counted it as "a scrap of paper." 
Again ! I hold in my hand a coin of the realm, 
a bit of silver that passes as currency, a pledge 
of good faith between man and man. And 
upon it I find this inscription: Georgius V, 



A SCRAP OF PAPER 125 

Dei Gratia Rex et Ind. Imp.: George V, by 
the grace of God, King, and Emperor of In- 
dia. Note the phrase " by the grace of God." 
It implies that by the gracious consent and 
anointing power of God our sovereign holds 
his place as King of Great Britain and Em- 
peror of India. From the Royal mint with the 
full authority of the nation we have stamped 
that conviction upon every coin, gold, silver, 
copper, that passes into the circulation of our 
business life. And yet there are times when 
in the greedy grasping after that coin and all 
it represents, in our surrender to the material- 
ism for which it often stands, we belie the pro- 
fession we have made, we have torn our cove- 
nant to shreds and tossed it as "a scrap of 
paper" to the winds. Within the memory of 
all who are here except the youngest will come 
the recollection of that day in 1897 when 
Queen Victoria celebrated her jubilee, gather- 
ing her children from a hundred colonies 
around her knees. In that elevated moment 
the true imperial sentiment found its utterance 
in the Recessional of Kipling — Kipling who 
unfortunately has not always consecrated his 
genius to such high ends. But in that greatest 



126 WOULD POWER 

product of his literary and spiritual genius he 
voiced the soul of the nation : 

"God of our fathers, known of old; 

Lord of our far flung battle line. 
Beneath whose awful hand we hold 

Dominion over palm and pine. 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget, lest we forget." 

And the closing verse, as it should, leads to 
the climax: 

"For heathen heart that puts her trust 

In reeking tube and iron shard. 
All valiant dust that builds on dust. 

And guarding calls not Thee to Guard. 
For frantic boast and foolish word. 
Thy mercy on Thy people. Lord." 

Noble sentiment and nobly expressed! Yet 
we know that we have put om- trust in "reeking 
tube" and "iron shard"; we have guarded and 
called not Him to guard; we have filled our 
lips with "frantic boast" and "foolish word," 
forgetting that by the hand of God we hold 
our wide dominion "over palm and pine." And 
we knew not that in every such hour we had 
torn our sacred compact to shreds and tossed it 
away like "a scrap of paper." 



A SCRAP OF PAPER 127 

But it is not with the national covenant I 
must leave the application of this truth. Let 
me search your hearts — nay, our hearts, let me 
say — with this nearer and sterner fact, that we 
have made and broken our personal covenants 
with God. Glad would I be, if time permitted, 
to tell of His unfailing faithfulness — how He 
has kept His covenant with men, how before 
all the world He can say, "My covenant will I 
not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out 
of my lips. Once have I sworn by my holiness 
that I will not lie unto David" (Ps. 89 : 34-35) . 
It is that unfailing covenant that is the glory 
of the world and the one bit of solid footing on 
which men of all the ages have found a place 
to stand. Think you to-night of your cove- 
nants with God, some of them made in the 
open before men, some made in the secret place 
where none but you and He could hear. How 
have you kept them? Have they been forgotten 
or ignored or openly repudiated? Are they 
nothing more to you than "a scrap of paper" ? 
I am speaking perhaps to some young man — 
your case is typical of more than one such in- 
stance I could call by name — who a few years 
ago found your whole heart go out in a pas- 



128 WORLD POWER 

sionate love to the woman who is now your 
wife. She was then an ardent Christian girl 
with strong convictions and high principles, 
true and loyal to her faith in Christ. And she 
told you frankly that she could never join her 
life to that of any man who did not share with 
her the faith she had in Jesus and the service 
she loved to render to His church. And that 
you promised to do. To win her for your own 
you pledged yourself to God, to serve her 
Christ and her church, and on the sacredness of 
that promise she went with you to the altar 
where you were made "one flesh." But the days 
have grown to months and the months have 
grown to years, and you have not redeemed 
your pledge, and the grey shade of disappoint- 
ment has come into her eyes, and you have be- 
numbed her soul and hardened your own, and 
as for your covenant with God you have torn it 
to shreds and thrown it as "a scrap of paper" 
into His face. I am speaking perhaps to some 
man or woman — your case is typical of more 
than one instance in my own ministry that I 
could call by name — who know what it is to go 
down to the very verge of the vaUey of death. 
You are not unlike one that I think of now to 



A SCRAP OF PAPER 120 

whose bed I was called more than one night in 
the grim conflict for life to help him if possible 
through prayer to beat back the hosts of death. 
And like him you promised that if God gave 
you back your life it would be His — from that 
time to do with it whatsoever He would. And 
like his your Kf e was given back — no one knows 
how. The doctor could not explain it, nor yet 
the nurse, nor yet the minister who sat beside 
you — save in this that God healed you in an- 
swer to your pledge to Him. But the days 
have gone, one excuse after another has been 
framed, one delay has followed another, and 
your pledge to the God who gave you back 
your life has not been yet redeemed. With 
an insolence and confidence bom out of the 
very strength you got from him you have re- 
pudiated your vows, you have torn your com- 
pact to shreds and flung it from you like "a 
scrap of paper." I am speaking perchance to 
some father and mother — ^your case, too, is typi- 
cal of more than one instance in my own ob- 
servation that I could call by name — who in 
days of horror and nights of growing despair 
fought for the life of the child that came to 
bless your home. Yours may not be unlike one 



130 WORLD POWER 

home I have now in mind. Two little girls had 
blessed their home circle with their beauty and 
love. And the desire of their hearts seemed all 
fulfilled when the baby boy joined their happy 
group. He was the light of their eyes. And I 
well remember the night when it seemed that 
he could not be with them till the morning. In 
the utter despair of that hour they went to 
God. Together they promised that if He 
would spare their child their lives, hitherto 
denied to Him, would be devoted to His ser- 
vice. And the mother in the fervor of her heart 
declared that if the boy was given back to 
them, and God should see fit to accept him, she 
would dedicate him to the ministry of the Gos- 
pel of the Son of God. And she promised, too, 
that she would train him up with that hope in 
mind that he might enter, if God so desired, the 
highest and holiest calling among men. And 
the child recovered, but the pledge lies broken, 
a thing that is repudiated, "a scrap of paper" 
they have thrown back into the face of God. 

What have you done with your vows, for 
there is no man or woman here, I venture, who 
has not in some way or in some hour struck a 
holy compact with the Lord? I call upon you 



A SCRAP OF PAPER 131 

to-night to redeem your covenant. I call upon 
you to renounce your treachery to the Most 
High. I call upon you to yield yourself to 
Christ, whose great mercy in you and love for 
you and gifts upon you with your acceptance 
and enjoyment of His daily goodness binds 
you by a solemn compact that no honorable 
man will dare to break. Is that covenant to be 
nothing but "a scrap of paper" ? 

"High heaven, that heard that solemn vow. 
That vow renewed shall daily hear. 
Till in life's latest hour I bow, 

And bless in death a bond so dear." 



VII 

BLOOD AND IRON: THE IMMO- 
RALITY OF MILITARISM 



VII 

BLOOD AND IROlSr: THE IMMO- 
RALITY OF MILITARISM 

Text: — "Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, 
and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the 
force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the 
time that their iniquity had an end. Therefore, as I live, 
saith the Lord God, I will prepare thee unto blood, and 
blood shall pursue thee: since thou hast not hated blood, 
even blood shall pursue thee." — Ezekiel 35 : 5-6. 

Peehaps there is no piece of literature either 
in the Bible or out of it that portrays in fewer 
words and more graphic colors the diabolical 
character of the spirit of militarism as it has 
revealed itself in every country and in every 
age. The whole hell-begotten family of this 
hell-begotten mother troop past us in this chap- 
ter across the stage of Edom's life. Here we 
see the "pride" that hardens the sensibilities; 
here is the "hatred" that is "perpetual" ; here is 
the "revenge" that never sleeps; here is the 
blood-lust that wallows in carnage; here is 
"envy" that clouds the reason; here is the "blas- 

135 



136 WORLD POWER 

phemy" that shudders the soul; here is the mad 
and ruthless ambition that tramples under foot 
the sacred rights of the weak, and does not hes- 
itate "to wade through slaughter to a throne 
and shut the gates of mercy on mankind." 

In those days of Ezekiel it was the land of 
Edom that was seized with this wild insanity — 
an insanity that has never failed to find a victim 
in every age of the world's life. What you find 
in Edom you will find in Nero at Rome, who 
gloated over the human torches with which he 
lighted his gardens as he burned the Christians 
to death. What you find in Nero you find in 
Napoleon, in the presence of whose statue in 
one of the great squares of Paris, one was 
heard to utter these words, "Monster, if all the 
blood that thou hast shed were gathered in this 
square thou wouldst not need to stoop thy lips 
to drink." What you find in Napoleon you 
find in Prince Bismarck, whose watchword for 
the German Empire was summed up in that 
notorious phrase, "Blood and iron! by blood 
and iron we shall extend our power." And 
what you find in Bismarck you will find in mod- 
em Prussia that has sold herself to blood, that 
has dedicated her powerful intellect to the de- 



BLOOD AND IRON 137 

vising and perfecting of the greatest fighting 
machine the world has ever seen, and prosti- 
tuted her soul to that ferocious hatred that has 
kindled the flame of war throughout the world. 
Now it is against that proud and envious and 
blood-lusting spirit of militarism that the swift 
rebuke of God is heard, not only in this chapter 
but throughout the whole Bible from Genesis 
to Revelation. There can be no doubt about 
the teaching of the Scripture in regard to that. 
No man can study the principles of Jesus with- 
out arriving at the firm conviction that in the 
intention of Christ concerning the Kingdom 
and its progress no place can be found for the 
spirit of "blood and iron." It is doubtless true 
— and it is clear enough to my own mind — that 
there are times and circumstances when war is 
justifiable, in self preservation, in the defence 
of liberties, in the protection of the weak, but 
the war of revenge, of aggression, of might, of 
ambition — these and the spirit out of which 
they spring must pass forever under the con- 
demnation not only of Christianity but of the 
whole civilized world. It is doubtless true — 
and it is our duty if possible to see it — that 
there are many great moral results secured 



138 WORLD POWER 

through war, but that is not due to the thing 
in itself which is evil, but to the over-ruling 
wisdom and power of God who is able to turn 
the evil to good account, and "make the very 
wrath of men to praise Him." After all that 
can be said about the moral sanctions for war 
and the moral results of war, the fact remains 
that woven into the fibre of our modern civiliza- 
tion there is that spirit of militarism that noth- 
ing can justify — ^blind, revengeful, aggressive, 
vaulting, drunk with sight of power, intoxi- 
cated with the taste of blood, a spirit that must 
be cut out like a cancer, a spirit which in the 
individual or the nation is condemned before 
the bar of God's justice and impeached before 
the conscience of the world. 

Its Barbarous Motives 

The utter wickedness of the spirit of militar- 
ism is apparent when you search the motives 
out of which it springs. It is not the noble and 
heroic that gives it birth. It is born out of .the 
baser animal passions — darkest, most cruel, 
most barbarous. This whirling passion that 
has seized the Prussian mind is not the product 



BLOOD AND IRON 139 

of the high and honorable impulses of life. It 
has leaped out of the very heart of hell. Its 
progenitors are hatred and greed and ambition. 
It is always so. We have only to look into our 
own hearts to learn that. No matter how our 
judgment may condemn it, nor how we may 
try to crush the beast within, nor how we tell 
ourselves that it is devilish, it needs no more at 
times than the sound of fife and drum to wake 
these barbarous passions and make us drunk 
with the wild wine of war. We know quite 
well what Richard le GalKenne meant when he 
wrote, 

War 

I abhor. 

And yet how sweet 

The sound along the marching street 

Of drum and fife, and I forget 

Broken old mothers, and the whole 

Dark butchery without a soul. 

Without a soul — save this bright drink 
Of heady music, sweet as hell; 
And even my peace-abiding feet 
Go marching with the marching feet. 
For yonder, yonder, goes the fife. 
And what care I for human life! 
The tears fill my astonished eyes 
'And my full heart is like to break; 



140 WORLD POWER 

And yet 'tis all embannered lies — 
A dream those drummers raake. 

Oh, it is wickedness to clothe 

Yon hideous grinning thing that stalks 

Hidden in music, like a queen 

That in a garden of glory walks. 

Till good men love the thing they loathe! 

Art, thou hast many infamies. 

But not an infamy like this. 

Oh, snap the fife and still the drum. 

And show the monster as she is ! 

And if we should see her as she is we would 
revolt from her. Tear open the heart of this 
barbarous thing and search its motives. You 
will find the lust for power. To rule Europe, 
to dominate the world, to dictate the terms of 
existence for other states, to hold the "place in 
the sun," to play the God for the universe — 
this is the consuming passion of the Prussian 
mind. Or lower than the lust for power is the 
lust for gain. Behind all this horrible crime 
of war there is the restless greed of the war- 
makers who foster the military spirit that the 
race in armaments may go on ; who create war 
scares that they may reap their millions out of 
the building of Dreadnoughts and siege guns; 
who change the fashion of weapons, scrapping 



BLOOD AND IRON 141 

those of last year out of which they made vast 
profits and introducing new models this year to 
make vaster profits still ; who bribe Parliaments 
and corrupt Cabinets for their unholy trade. 
Mr. J. A. Hobson, speaking of the book en- 
titled "The War Traders," by Mr. G. H. Fer- 
ris, says, "The story is positively fascinating in 
its wickedness." It is worth noting that the 
wealthiest woman in the world to-day is the 
young woman of the Krupp family which owns 
the immense Krupp works in which Germany 
has forged her mighty engines of death. Or 
deeper than the lust for power and the lust for 
gain is the lust of hate. It comes out in the 
ideals and literature of the German people. 
Here is a passage from the pen of Dr. Fuchs, 
a German educationist, who advocates the use 
of the schools for the cultivation of hate: 
"Therefore the German claim of the day must 
be — ^the family to the front. The state has to 
follow, at first in the school, then in foreign 
politics. Education to hate. Education to the 
estimation of hatred; organization of hatred. 
Education to the desire for hatred. Let us 
abolish unripe and false shame before brutality 
and fanaticism. We must not hesitate to an- 



142 WORLD POWER 

nounce : To us is given faith, hope and hatred, 
but hatred is the greatest among them." Here 
is a verse of a poem by Ernest Lissauer as he 
voices his hate against England — translated by 
Barbara Henderson, 

"You we hate with a lasting hate. 
We shall never forego our hate; 
Hate by water and hate by land 
Hate of the head and hate of the hand. 
Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown, 
Hate of seventy millions choking down." 

It is out of that spirit that our militarism is 
born and when you feel its hot blast upon your 
face it is as though you stood in the very vesti- 
bules of hell. 



Its Mission Is Irrational and Futile 

Again the vi^ickedness of militarism appears 
because it is so utterly irrational and futile, its 
means so ill adapted to the end it has in view. 
For it is supposed to secure justice among men 
and how often do you suppose it succeeds in its 
attempt. Speaking generally there have been 
three methods adopted by which men have tried 
to secure justice. One was by duelling, which 



BLOOD AND IRON 148 

is an appeal to force; another by casting lots, 
which is an appeal to chance; and another by 
arbitration, which is an appeal to reason and 
which answers to our various forms of judica- 
ture. An appeal to force, chance and reason — 
and of all these the appeal to force is the least 
rational, for it is least likely to secure a just 
decision. It is not always that you can count 
on justice being* on the side of might. If jus- 
tice is based on the appeal to force then the day 
of justice in the case of Belgium vs. Germany 
would be far distant. It was Napoleon's sneer 
that "God was always on the side of the big- 
gest battalions," but that is a lie and Napoleon 
lived long enough to learn the falsity of such a 
word as that. The truth is that far too often 
God is ruled out of the case altogether. He is 
defied; He is forgotten; and out of the shat- 
tered work of man He must glean the harvest 
of justice as best His wisdom can. 

How insane it all seems when you remember 
that when the struggle is all over and the con- 
testants lie bleeding and helpless they will have 
to do in weakness what they might have done in 
strength ; they will have to do at the end what 
they might have done at the beginning — to ap- 



144. WORLD POWER 

peal to reason and make their terms of peace. 
At the end of every war is a treaty, and every 
such treaty, welcome as it may be, is a con- 
demnation of the very thing it terminates. 
For it should have been, and might have been, 
made before instead of after, and had it come 
before there would have been no war for it to 
close. O, the utter insanity of it all ! We need 
only call the case before our minds to see how 
diabolical, how irrational, how ill-adapted is 
the method to secure the end in view. Carlyle 
exposes its absurdity in a fine passage in "Sar- 
tor Resartus" : "What, speaking in quite un- 
official language, is the net purport and upshot 
of war? — To my own knowledge, for exam- 
ple, there dwell and toil, in the British vil- 
lage of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred 
souls. From these, there are selected, during 
the French war, say thirty able-bodied men. 
Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled 
and nursed them; she has, not without diffi- 
culty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, 
and even trained them to crafts, so that one 
can weave, another build, another hammer, and 
the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoir- 
dupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and 



BLOOD AND IRON 145 

swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; 
and shipped away, at the public charges, some 
two thousand miles or say only to the south of 
Spain ; and fed there till wanted. 

"And now to that same spot in the south 
of Spain are thirty similar French artisans, 
from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner 
wending, till at length, after infinite effort, 
the two parties come into actual juxtaposition; 
and thirty stands fronting thirty, each with a 
gun in his hand. 

"Straightway the word *Fire!' is given, and 
they blow the souls out of one another, and 
in place of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen the 
world has sixty dead carcases, which it must 
bury and anew shed tears for. Had these men 
any quarrel? Busy as the devil is, not the 
smallest! They lived far enough apart; were 
the entirest strangers; nay in so wide a uni- 
verse, there was even, unconsciously, by com- 
merce, some mutual helpfulness between them. 
How then? Simpleton! Their governors had 
fallen out, and instead of shooting one another, 
had the cunning to make these poor blockheads 
shoot." 

Futile indeed is the mission of militarism in 



14.6 WORLD POWER 

securing justice or securing peace. The watch- 
word of European militarism for the past gen- 
eration has been, "To secure peace be prepared 
for war." That lie is discredited forever. Has 
not this war leapt out of an armed peace? Can 
it be doubted that it made arbitration impos- 
sible? Did not the combatants refuse to appeal 
to reason because they were organized and 
equipped to the last button on their uniform 
and the last drop of oil in the machinery of 
war? Is it not true that Europe has been an 
armed camp ; its manhood a drilled body of sol- 
diers; its millions spent on battleships or field 
artillery; its idle officers eager for war that 
they might justify their long years of train- 
ing? No! No! The sword has been tried for 
centuries as a means to secure peace and for- 
ever for civilization there has been nailed to 
the wall that falsehood that the way to guar- 
antee peace is to stand prepared for war. 

Its Attitude is Treason Against God 

The wickedness of the spirit of militarism 
appears from another angle. It is high trea- 
son against the constituted authority of the 



BLOOD AND IRON 147 

universe. In God is the sovereign power. The 
spirit of militarism, such as I have described, 
is a revolt against His authority; it is a de- 
fiance of His constituted power. It is an 
attempt to leap into the throne of the eternal; 
it is the assumption of that sword that belongs 
alone to His hand for "Vengeance is mine, I 
will repay, saith the Lord." I stated in the 
earlier part of my sermon that there were times 
and circumstances when war was justifiable. 
But no war is justifiable on both sides. Some- 
one has been the aggressor. It may be that 
one nation is clear in conscience, in self-de- 
fence, or in the protection of the weak, but 
God will never justify the nation that was the 
aggressor in revenge, or ambition, or greed. 
In every such terrible struggle as we see to- 
day someone has arrogated to himself the Di- 
vine prerogative. For Christ is the appointed 
King of Kings and Lord of Lords. His will 
is the will for the whole earth, and they who, 
driven on by the lust for gain or the lust for 
power or the lust of hate, "take the sword shall 
perish by the sword," for in so doing they have 
set themselves against the mighty law of Christ 
within the earth. At bottom then it is atheis- 



148 WORLD POWER 

tic. It is not just to say that it is brutal; that 
would be a slander on the brute creation for 
they would never do the deeds that men have 
done within these past few weeks. It is not 
just to say that it is barbarous, for the barbari- 
ans have not stooped lower than the so-called 
civilized nations in those atrocities that have 
been perpetrated in the name of culture. There 
is only one name for it — it is devilish, satanic, 
springing out of the spirit of hell, and in its 
last analysis it is not only atheistic but it is a 
blow aimed at the constituted authority and 
sovereignty of God. 

The Personal Equation 

It is easy to see how all this comes back to 
fit itself upon the individual in his relation to 
Christ. The spirit of militarism against man 
roots itself in the spirit of militarism against 
God. And if you have not surrendered your- 
self to the Lordship of Jesus you have set 
yourself against the constituted authority of 
the universe. For it is written of Him that 
"He must reign — He must reign until all His 
enemies shall be put under His feet." And it 



BLOOD AND IRON 149 

is written again of Him that, "God also hath 
highly exalted Him, and given Him a name 
that is above every name; that at the name of 
Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
heaven, and things in earth, and things under 
the earth; and that every tongue should con- 
fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of 
God the Father." And every one who does 
not so bow and so confess is a rebel in God's 
great world. He is defying the government 
of Christ. He is a centre for the forces of 
sedition — sedition against Him who by crea- 
tion and redemption has established every claim 
upon our allegiance and our love. There is 
not a high thinking man or woman here who 
has not in the past few days entertained a feel- 
ing of contempt for those leaders in the South 
African revolt — ^men who a few years ago took 
the oath of allegiance to the British crown, 
who have enjoyed since that day the benefits 
of her liberty, who accepted positions of trust 
in the councils of the nation, and who in the 
moment of the Empire's great peril have seized 
the opportunity to strike a blow at her heart. 
But what shall be said of those who owe their 
very being unto Christ, who have been cared 



150 WORLD POWER 

for and nurtured through these years by His 
love, who enjoy the Hberties of this land be- 
cause of His work, who have been redeemed 
upon the cross by the incalculable price of His 
blood — what shall be said of those, who in the 
full enjoyment of His goodness have lifted 
their hand in rebelhon to smite Him from 
His throne? My friends, the most pressing 
problem of this moment for you is the spirit 
of militarism that you hold against the author- 
ity of Christ. And I summon you to-night to 
lay down your arms of rebellion against Him. 
I summon you to yield to His will and to the 
Empire of that love whose bondage is the guar- 
antee of your fullest freedom. 



VIII 

TREASON TO CULTURE: THE 
MARKS OF PROGRESS 



VIII 

TREASON TO CULTURE: THE 
MARKS OF PROGRESS 

Text: — "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which 
indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full 
of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness." Matthew 

23:27. 

These are strong and terrible words, fall- 
ing as they do from the lips of Him who was 
the Lord of incarnate love. With the excep- 
tion of those words addressed to the cities of 
His day — Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Caper- 
naum — no words perhaps ever fell from our 
Lord's lips that voice such a merciless exposure 
as do these of the shams and hypocrisies of 
men. There were some kinds of sin in the pres- 
ence of which our Saviour spoke with the 
greatest tenderness and the deepest love, for 
it was written of Him, "The bruised reed He 
shall not break and the smoking flax He shall 
not quench." But there were other kinds of 

153 



154 WORLD POWER 

sin that required heroic treatment and these 
never failed to kindle the flame of His high 
and holy indignation. Spiritual pride was one 
of them; self -righteousness was another, cov- 
etousness was another; oppression of the 
weak was another. But the one that kindled 
the hottest flame of His anger was that hypoc- 
risy that harbored a spirit of evil within while 
it carried a fair profession without. Twelve 
times in the lesson I have read He hurled His 
anathemas against it. Seven times out of the 
twelve He addressed them as "hypocrites" ; 
twice He calls them "blind guides"; twice He 
calls them "fools and blind" ; and once He ad- 
dressed them as a "generation of vipers." But 
of all His withering words against sham and 
the false exterior of life this figure of the text 
is perhaps the most scathing and rebuking of 
them all: "For ye are like unto whited sepul- 
chres which indeed appear beautiful outward, 
but within are full of dead men's bones and 
of all uncleanness." 

The imagery behind this denunciation was 
one that would make a very powerful appeal 
to the vivid imagination of every Jewish mind. 
These whited sepulchres gleaming in the sun 



TREASON TO CULTURE 155 

were a familiar feature in the landscape. They 
were not separate buildings like the stately 
mausoleums of Rome. They were simply cav- 
erns cut in the face of the limestone rock with 
a great stone set up to close the opening. Once 
a year these stones were whitewashed not for 
the purpose of making them beautiful but to 
warn the people that a grave was there lest 
they should touch it, and touching be defiled. 
Many a time our Lord had wondered at them 
when He rambled as a lad among the hills 
of Nazareth. You know how the darkness 
and the white stones and the thought of the 
dead would stir the imagination of a boy. It 
had burned itself into His brain and years 
afterwards in His preaching whenever He saw 
the fair exterior and the outward profession, 
knowing that behind there lay pride and ar- 
rogance and spiritual decay and cruelty, His 
mind flew back to the vivid picture of His 
youth and He turned to say to them : "Ye are 
like the whited sepulchres I was wont to see 
at Nazareth, that appeared so beautiful out- 
wardly but within were full of uncleanness and 
dead men's bones." 

Terrible as the figure is, it will always re- 



156 WORLD POWER 

main as the truest and most merciless expo- 
sure of a spurious culture in all its forms. Here 
we are reminded that "man looketh upon the 
outward appearance but God looketh on the 
heart." Here we are warned that the hid- 
den rottenness of life will be eventually ex- 
posed. Here we are informed in the plainest 
of terms that all the decoration and garnish- 
ing and poHshing of life is useless without a 
cleansing from within, and no great and last- 
ing transformation of society can ever be ex- 
pected that does not touch and regenerate the 
secret springs of being. 

The False Conception of Culture 

At the present moment the world is vastly 
interested in the idea of culture because Ger- 
many has presented to us a type of culture 
which she has nourished with the most assid- 
uous care for the past generation. You are 
all well aware that the German Empire in 
its present form came to its birth mider the 
dominance of one great idea, — the profound 
conviction of the supreme value of the Teu- 
tonic mind and the German element for the 



TREASON TO CULTURE 157 

civilization of the world. With all their char- 
acteristic energy and thoroughness they under- 
took the cultivation of that Teutonic type. 
They perfected their government, reorganized 
their system of education, expanded their com- 
merce, and developed their science and their 
art. It is safe to say that the Germans have 
been by all means the most comprehensive and 
discriminating students of modern times. The 
systematic thoroughness with which everything 
is done in the world of intellect in Germany is 
almost inconceivable, and they have succeeded 
in developing an imposing system of culture 
that has become a powerful factor in the life 
of Europe and in the life of the world. There 
are many respects in which the students of 
every nation have sat at the feet of Germany 
and have learned of her during the past gen- 
eration. She has become the acknowledged 
leader in science and technical education, is 
regarded by many as the pioneer in the world 
of philosophy and by some as the pathfinder in 
the realms of theological thought. Neither do 
we forget that this was a culture that had its 
roots in a truly great and glorious past. We 
gratefully remember that it was Germany who 



158 WOULD POWER 

gave us Luther, the father of modern Protes- 
tantism; that it was Germany who gave us 
Kant, the father of modern philosophy; that 
it was Germany who gave us Goethe with his 
matchless poetry and Beethoven and Wagner 
with their majestic music. 

Yes! a noble past but the German culture 
of to-day has fallen far below that level. It 
has gathered into its bosom many elements of 
barbarism and might. It fed itself upon the 
philosophy of Nietzsche and kindred cults, who 
taught that might is right, that the survival 
of the fittest leaves no place for the unfit, that 
the fittest are those who are able by pure force 
to push themselves to the top, that the strong 
are bound by no obligations to the weak. 

*'That they shall take who have the power 
And they shall keep who can." 

Its ideals are not the ideals of Christ; its mo- 
tives are not the motives of Jesus. It has taken 
the great words of humanity, like Valor and 
Honor and Power and Heroism, and emptied 
them of their noble contents only to fill them 
with the idea of Brute Force. It engendered 
within its heart the spirit of pride, the spirit 



TREASON TO CULTURE 159 

of arrogance, and a haughty selfishness that 
trampled underfoot the sacred prerogatives of 
the soul. Its insolence had no bounds. It has 
been generally agreed that there is nothing 
quite so insolent and clumsy in the interna- 
tional contact as Prussian diplomacy. It has 
reversed the standards of character and con- 
duct that were set by Jesus; it has written 
the Beatitudes to read: "Ye have heard how 
in olden times it was said, 'Blessed are the 
meek for they shall inherit the earth.' But I 
say unto you: Blessed are the valiant for they 
shall make the earth their throne. And ye 
have heard men say, 'Blessed are the poor in 
spirit,' but I say unto you: Blessed are the 
great in soul and the free in spirit for they 
shall enter Valhalla. And ye have heard men 
say: 'Blessed are the peace-makers,' but I say 
unto you : Blessed are the war-makers for they 
shall be called, if not the children of Jahve, 
the children of Odin, who is greater than 
Jahve." And hidden away in the heart of this 
whited sepulchre of modern culture is that 
which is most deadly of all — a passionate ha- 
tred, that never sleeps, that summons heart 
and hand and head to the work of revenge, — 



160 WORLD POWER 

a hatred that issues in a cruelty and ruthless- 
ness, that gluts on blood, and leaves behind its 
smoking" trail the mangled bodies of the de- 
fenceless and the innocent, the aged, the mother 
and the child. It was the charge of Harnack, 
the greatest of Germany's theologians, that 
in taking the field against Germany, Britain 
was guilty of a "treason to culture." Trea- 
son to culture forsooth! If this be the culture 
they offer then let it be part of Britain's never- 
dying glory that in the hour of the world's 
great danger she should prove a traitor to a 
culture such as that! 

The True Conception of Culture 

Over against this spurious product we set 
the true culture as it is revealed in Christ. 
When I came to this point in the preparation 
of my sermon and looked about in my own 
mind for some statement of pure culture, some 
description of the refined and noble character, 
I found myself come back invariably to those 
words with which our Lord opened His ser- 
mon on the Mount. They are known as the 
Beatitudes. They might also be called the 



TREASON TO CULTURE 161 

Elements of a True Culture. They who pos- 
sess those qualities of heart and mind are the 
exponents of the highest form of culture. It 
will be worth our while to refresh our minds 
with this Divine summary of life at its best 
and highest: 

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom 
of Heaven. 

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be com- 
forted. 

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness: for they shall be filled. 

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. 

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called 
the children of God. 

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' 
sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 

These are the qualities that make for culture. 
The poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, 
they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 
the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace- 
makers, the persecuted — these are the men and 
women who have stepped into the true aris- 
tocracy of refinement, whose presence is a 
blessing unto men and whose reward will never 
fail. 



162 WORLD POWER 

Should you ask for an illustrious example 
of that perfect culture you will find it in Him 
by whose lips those words were first of all 
pronounced. His heart is pure and warm; 
His mind is clear and unprejudiced; His spirit 
is without guile ; He bore no bitterness, "Who, 
when He was reviled, reviled not again ; when 
He suffered threatened not; but committed 
Himself to Him that judgeth righteously"; 
He is strong with all the strength of a lion 
for He is the "Lion of the tribe of Judah"; 
He is gentle with all the gentleness of a Lamb 
for "He is the Lamb of God"; He holds in 
perfect poise all the apposites of character. To 
put it in George Dana Boardman's splendid 
summary. He was: "gracious without conde- 
scension; just without severity; lenient without 
laxity; flexible without vacillation; patient 
without stoicism; decisive without bluntness; 
imperative without imperiousness ; heroic with- 
out coarseness; indignant without bitterness; 
forgiving without feebleness ; sociable without 
familiarity; in a word He was absolutely per- 
fect, and yet absolutely natural." 

It is only as we come into the clear at- 
mosphere of such lofty standards and perfect 



TREASON TO CULTURE 163 

character that we realize how far removed is 
the German ideal from all that is sound and 
pure in the realm of culture. Put up against 
the background of the Christ spirit and the 
Christ teaching it is not only found wanting 
but proclaims itself as diametrically opposed 
to all truer instincts of the higher life of man. 

Society and the Individual 

In the light then of our Lord's test as ap- 
plied to life either in society or in the indi- 
vidual two conclusions must become clear. 

1. Society's transformation must he 
wrought from within. We have an old prov- 
erb: "Scratch a Russian and you will find a 
Tartar," which is only another way of saying 
that the veneer of civilization leaves the soul 
untouched. If the present events have taught 
us anything they have taught us that if you 
scratch civilization you will find beneath its 
veneer the elements of barbarism. Time has 
proved that you may make a community rich, 
and comfortable, and clean, and intelligent, 
and sesthetic, and still leave its moral life un- 
changed. What society demands for its trans- 



164 WORLD POWER 

formation is not some adornment from with- 
out but some new impulse from within; not 
some revising but some renewal; not some re- 
formation but some regeneration. Society can 
never be saved on the horizontal except as it 
is saved in the perpendicular. Let us have 
our art and education and the cultivation of 
the sesthetic and the improvement of the con- 
ditions under which we live. These things we 
ought to do and not to leave the others un- 
done, but let us never imagine that we have 
reached a true culture until our moral stand- 
ards are set to the standards of Christ and the 
spiritual impulses of the nation's life flow out 
from righteousness and justice and truth. 

2. Individual salvation demands an inward 
change. It is difficult for our so-called culture 
to comprehend that necessity. The New 
Testament furnished the most outstanding ex- 
ample of that. If ever there was a man in 
Jerusalem who might have been regarded as a 
man of culture that man was Nicodemus. Yet 
to this man Jesus said in the most unequivocal 
terms: "Verily, verily, I say unto you except 
a man be born again he cannot see the King- 
dom of God." "Ye must be born again." 



TREASON TO CULTURE 165 

There is something in this finahty of Jesus 
from which there is no appeal. In every in- 
stance where Jesus opens a sentence with 
"Verily, verily" there follows a pronouncement 
that admits of no qualification. And in every 
instance where Jesus says, "except" and "can- 
not" you may know that He has reached the ir- 
reducible minimum. And in every instance 
where Jesus says, "must" you may know that 
there stands behind Him the compulsion of 
eternity. 

There is something* therefore tremendously 
final in His word to this cultured man. 'No 
man could be more surprised to hear it than 
Nicodemus. Nicodemus was the last man in 
all Jerusalem who thought that he needed to 
be bom again. He was a ruler of the Jews. 
He was a master in Israel. He belonged to 
the highest religious body in the land. He 
was learned in the Scriptures. He was con- 
nected with and practised the highest moral- 
ity. Nicodemus had always taken it for grant- 
ed that if the Kingdom came in his day he 
would be taken up to sit in one of the highest 
seats. It had never once entered his head 
that he needed to be anything else than he was 



166 WORLD POWER 

— a respectable, moral man, devoted to the 
Church and State and honored in their high 
offices. What a blow in the face it must have 
been for Nicodemus to be told, and told by 
the King Himself, that he had not reached 
the true culture of life and never would until 
he had been born again. 

Let us not marvel at that either in his case 
or in our own. The truth is that the only way 
to truly enter into a kingdom is to be born 
into it. Except a man be born with brains he 
cannot enter into the kingdom of intellect. 
Except a man be born with artistic instincts he 
cannot enter into the kingdom of art. Ex- 
cept a man be born with poetic impulses he 
cannot enter into the kingdom of poetry. 
Poets are bom not made. So are Christians, 
who at their best represent the highest culture. 
Reasons enough there are, God knows, why 
we require such a miracle upon our inner life. 
Every other conceivable means has been tried 
to make life different but it has not availed. 
Philosophy was tried. Philanthropy was tried. 
Reformation was tried. Environment was 
tried. But all in vain. Nothing short of a 
regeneration from within will make life new 



TREASON TO CULTURE 167 

and touch it with the beauty of the true cul- 
ture. Truly Jesus knew whereof He was 
speaking when He said: "Ye must, ye must be 
bom again." 

My friends, this is the true culture. By 
all means, let us better the conditions under 
which we live. Let us cultivate the aesthetic. 
Let us store our minds with knowledge. Let 
us surround ourselves with noble and refined 
associations, but let us never imagine that in 
so doing we have attained unto the true cul- 
ture. That is only reached through the pos- 
session of a mind and heart renewed by the 
grace of God and led captive to the will of 
Christ. 

"One thing I of the Lord desire. 
For all my way hath miry been. 
Be it by water or by fire, 
O, make me clean ! O, make me clean ! 

So wash me thou without, within. 
Or purge with fire if that must be, 
No matter how, if only sin 
Die out in me, die out in me." 



IX 

PEACE WITH HONOR: THE FOUN- 
DATIONS OF PEACE 



IX 

PEACE WITH HONOR: THE FOUN- 
DATIONS OF PEACE 

Text: — "And the work of righteousness shall be 
peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and 
peace forever." — Isaiah 32: 17. 

The popular phrase to which your atten- 
tion is invited is one that has long held a place 
in the vocabulary of every honorable nation. 
Peace they must have but it must be "peace 
with honor." The sword must be sheathed but 
it must not be sheathed in shame. There may 
be defeat but it must be defeat that has no 
disgrace. Peace with honor ! Seldom perhaps 
has that phrase sent a deeper thrill through 
Britain than in those stormy days when Dis- 
raeli's hand was on the helm of state. In the 
presence of a great international crisis that 
threatened almost every country in Europe he 
conducted at Berlin those negotiations that se- 
cured an honorable peace. On his return to 

171 



172 WORLD POWER 

England, and in his own mysterious fashion, 
he announced the result of his mission in those 
memorable words, "Peace with honor." It was 
a word that sent the nation into a dehrium 
of joy and made them doubly delirious when 
they knew that not only was peace secured but 
it was a peace in which the country's honor was 
truly and honorably sustained. For that is a 
sentiment that burns in the heart of every true 
patriot. He demands it for himself and he 
demands it all the more for his country. If 
he will live he must live honorably ; if he must 
die he will die without disgrace, and there is 
no man with the faintest spark of nobility in 
him who does not understand the lofty senti- 
ment of Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or 
give me death." 

It was that sort of liberty and peace that the 
prophet Isaiah saw as he turned his eyes away 
to the golden days that lay beyond. "The fruit 
of righteousness shall be peace." The peace 
that was coming was a peace in which the na- 
tion could rejoice. It was a peace in which 
all that was best and highest would be secured 
and all that was base and unjust would be sub- 
dued. That was a peace that would be based 



PEACE WITH HONOR 173 

on a righteous government, for he says, "A 
king shall reign in righteousness and princes 
shall rule in judgment." That was a peace 
that would protect the individual man and 
make him a potent factor in the life of the 
nation, for he says that "a man shall be a hid- 
ing placfe from the wind and a covert from 
the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place 
and as the shadow of a great rock in a weary 
land." That was a peace that redeemed the 
foolhardy and the coward for "the heart of the 
rash shall understand knowledge and the 
tongue of the stammerer shall be ready to 
speak plainly." That was a peace that would 
provide for all the natural resources of the 
land for "the wilderness shall be a fruitful 
field and the fruitful field be counted for a 
forest." That is the peace that every true 
nation has always desired and that is the peace 
for which, I trust, we long and pray and fight 
in this most awful struggle of the world's dark 
night. 

The Cry for Peace 

Peace ! Yes, but remember it must be peace 
with honor ! Let me remind you of what is tak- 



174 WORLD POWER 

ing place to-night — ^has taken place indeed to- 
day throughout the whole wide world. On 
this Sabbath day — the Sabbath day of God — 
there has risen from the lowly altars of bleed- 
ing hearts and from the lofty altars of ancient 
shrines the agonizing cry to God for peace. 
It was lifted in the severe and simple chapels 
of England by plain and earnest men with no 
other ordaining hand upon them than the un- 
seen hand of the Eternal, It was echoed in 
the great cathedrals through "long-drawn aisle 
and fretted vault" by men behind whose ordi- 
nation vows there stand the unbroken succes- 
sion of a priestly order. It was uttered by the 
devout Roman Catholic in the shattered 
churches of Belgium, by the sad and reverent 
peasant over whose hearth there passed the dev- 
astating horrors of war. It resounded in the 
stately ritual of the Greek Catholic Church 
of Russia threading its way to God through 
heavy incensed air. It was wrung out of the 
anguished hearts of fearful wives who fear 
that they shall never see again the faces of 
men who are more to them than life itself. It 
was distilled in blood-drops from the souls of 
mothers who pass through their sevenfold 



PEACE WITH HONOR 175 

Gethsemane for sons who gladly cast away 
their lives in a rapture of courage and sacri- 
fice. From every heart that is not stone such 
prayers as those shall rise. But this will be 
their one great reservation — it must be peace 
with honor. Even in the falling blood-drops 
of mothers' prayers you will hear that reserva- 
tion. Peace! but peace with honor! Peace! 
but not merely peace for the sake of peace! 
Peace! but not peace at any price! Peace! 
but peace that leaves no shame, that suffers 
no disgrace, that heaps no dark dishonor on 
the nation's soul! 

The Terms of Peace 

What then is involved in that? There is no 
presumption, to my mind at least, in the fact 
that already we are beginning to think of the 
terms without which Britain shall not put up 
the sword. Not that the end is near, nor the 
victory won, but it is just at this time when 
the awful price is being paid that we must 
shape within our minds the unyielding terms 
by which we hope to safeguard and guarantee 
our future for many years to come. Believ- 



176 WORLD POWER 

ing as we do that Germany was the aggressor 
in this war; that she might have spoken at Vi- 
enna the word that would have forbidden it 
and that word she refused to speak; that she 
planned for it and hastened it; that she vio- 
lated her treaty obligations in striking and has 
violated the instincts of a common humanity 
in the conduct of her campaign — ^believing 
that, there are some considerations without 
which an honorable peace can never be signed. 
What those terms may be must be left to wiser 
and higher minds than ours, but the common 
sense and conscience of the common people 
is not far astray when it demands the follow- 
ing: The destruction of the power of Prus- 
sian militarism and the blotting out of the 
Krupp works at Essen ; the dismantling of the 
German navy ; indemnities from Germany that 
will fully repair, so far as money can repair, 
the losses to Belgium and France ; the restora- 
tion of Alsace-Lorraine to the French Repub- 
lic ; the Kiel canal in the hands of an interna- 
tional commission; the limitation of Germany's 
future military power; a full manhood suf- 
frage for Germany to dehver her from the 
power of her own military party; the racial 



PEACE WITH HONOR 177 

boundaries to determine the boundaries of 
states; the independence of Poland; the ex- 
clusion of the Turk from Europe; the end 
of secret diplomacy so that never again shall 
the declaration of war rest with a few diplo- 
mats who deny to the people any voice in a 
national step that plung-es the nation into a 
welter of blood and sends all the waves and bil- 
lows of sorrow over the people's soul. 

An examination of these terms — reflecting 
as they do the thought and conscience of the 
people — reveals at least these three conditions 
involved in peace with honor. 

Based on Righteousness 

1. It must be a peace that is based on right- 
eousness. True peace is only reached where 
justice is secured. "Behold a king shall reign 
in righteousness." It is only when our dif- 
ferences are settled with a due regard for 
righteousness that we reach the sohd ground 
of peace. It is for that reason that the world 
demands that German militarism shall be de- 
stroyed for it is this spirit that has sinned 
against Europe. It is for the same reason that 



178 WORLD POWEK 

civilization demands that the weapon be taken 
out of the hands in which it cannot be trusted. 
It is for that reason that civihzation demands 
that the wanton damage done must be repaired. 
Restitution of all wrong must be made so far 
as restitution can be made. Belgian homes 
must be rebuilt; Belgian churches must be re- 
paired; Belgian fields must be restored. They 
who have been beggared, whose substance has 
been wasted, the labor of their years swept 
away in a night, whose fields are a wilderness 
and whose hills and valleys are an unbroken 
graveyard — ^these must be compensated if com- 
pensation can be found. That constitutes a 
debt that it is the duty of civilization to see 
shall be paid to the very last farthing. 

That is an instinct that is truly based in the 
conscience of the race. It holds good through- 
out the whole moral order. It applies with 
equal force to the final rightness of society and 
to the final peace of the individual soul. There 
is no peace worth while that is not based on 
righteousness. It is right at this point that 
we get a glimpse into the necessity of Calvary. 
How often men think that the Cross might 
have been dispensed with in the redemption 



PEACE WITH HONOR 179 

of the world. They see no reason why sin 
could not be forgotten and wiped out, with- 
out an atonement such as was demanded on the 
Tree. But such men forget that God had to 
do right by the moral order of the world. He 
could not meet sin in any other way. For 
here was the problem. He must condemn the 
sin and at the same time save the sinner. He 
must uphold the ethical order of the universe 
and at the same time save that man whom the 
ethical order condemned. To use Paul's great 
phrase he must "be just and the justifier" of 
the unjust. Surely as Chalmers said, "It was 
a problem fit for a God." And that founda- 
tion of peace can never change. It must be 
based on righteousness. "There is no peace 
saith my God to the wicked." You must 
come to some understanding with God about 
your sin. It is not merely a question of gain- 
ing peace. It is a question of gaining the true 
peace that is based on righteousness. You 
will wander in the wilderness of a great un- 
rest until you reach that solid ground where 
the soul's content is deep and strong and abid- 
ing because it is rooted in the fact that full 
atonement has been made — ^that perfect atone- 



180 WORLD POWER 

ment which was made in Jesus Christ our 
Lord. 

Enduring 

2. It must he a peace that is enduring. I 
do not mean to imply that with the ending of 
this war we can make a peace that shall bind 
the world for all time to come. I am well 
aware that in many quarters the conviction is 
expressed that this is "a war on war" and that 
"this will be the last great war." I regret to 
say that I cannot cherish that hope. No doubt 
we shall see a great revulsion of world senti- 
ment against war with a diminution of arma- 
ments and the war-spirit rebuked. But that 
is not necessarily the end of war. As Tenny- 
son asks, "Who can fancy warless men?" But 
we mean this much at least, that in the peace 
that follows there must be no patching up, no 
compromise with honor, no temporizing, no 
mere cessation of hostilities for a season, no 
healing of the hurt of the daughter of my peo- 
ple slightly, saying, "Peace! peace! when there 
is no peace," no such obscuring of the great 
principles and issues at stake as to leave the 
whole battle to be fought over again. Those 



PEACE WITH HONOR 181 

who know anything of the recent events in 
Europe know that peace of a kind has been 
made many times during the past few years, 
but it was not the peace that endures. Such 
a peace was made in the Balkan crisis, but it 
was no more than a truce. Such a peace was 
made in the Morocco crisis, but it was no more 
than a bit of temporizing. Such a peace was 
made in the Tripoli crisis, but it merely put 
off the evil day unto the to-morrow. The peace 
that closed the Franco-Prussian war was not 
a lasting peace. It left France smarting un- 
der humiliation and her borders still menaced 
by the presence of a watchful foe. If France 
and Germany have not met on the battle- 
fields of Europe for forty years it was not 
because they were at peace. It was an armed 
neutrality. It was a breathing spell for a 
worse conflict. Writing in 1897 of "The 
Peace, 1871" — the peace that did not pacify 
— EHzabeth Waterhouse put it thus in her 
poem: — 

"I have made peace, thank God." O Emperor King; 
At this thy word the nations lift their eyes. 
Looking for One they wot of to arise. 
White robed, on happy wing. 



182 WORLD POWER 

What do they see? There crouches at thy heel 
A sullen thing with vengeance in her face. 
Writhing and wroth, but fettered to her place 
By bonds of German steel. 

As one should tell us in the dim thick night — 
"Behold the dawn," and we looked forth to see 
The whole wide East grown golden silently 
With joy of coming light. 

And saw instead a line of cloudy flame 
And lightning flashes leaping swift there-through, 
And heard the muffled thunder-pulse and knew 
The storm, not morning, came. 

So is it when each wiry nerve to-day 
Of eager Europe thrills with that sweet word, 
Sweet yet so false, soon as its sound is heard 
Its promise dies away. 

Thy God of Battles, whom we do not know. 
Thank for the Rhinelands and the Golden Fleece, 
But not for such poor truce the Christ of Peace — 
His Peace He gives not so. 

So must it ever be in the nation's soul and 
ours. No peace is worth the name that does 
not come to stay. We shall never know true 
peace on any path that merely patches up 
the past and temporizes and leaves the soul's 
great central problem still untouched. "Peace 
I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; 



PEACE WITH HONOR 183 

not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let 
not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
afraid." My friend, there is a peace the world 
can never give and cannot take away. There 
is a peace that endures through storm and tem- 
pest. There is a peace that leaves you free to 
keep unbroken fellowship with God — a peace 
that persists in life and death, in time and 
eternity, but it is not found elsewhere than 
in the reconciling love of the Eternal Son 
of God. 

Fruitful 

3. Peace with honor demands again that the 
peace must be fruitful. Look you at the peace 
that Europe has maintained for the past forty 
years. It was a peace that wasted her vast re- 
sources in many ways. The country bled at 
every pore even without the curse of war. It 
was a peace in many ways more devastating 
than war because it was long drawn out. Na- 
tions slept with their armor on, with one eye 
open, waiting for the footstep of the foe. The 
tension and fear and dread sapped the vitals 
of every land. Think of the expenditures in 
those forty years of peace. Contemplate for 



184. WORLD POWER 

a moment the incalculable millions wasted and 
worse than wasted in the preparation for war. 
The hard-earned savings of the poor, the 
blood-drops of labor, the brawn and brain of 
men and women and children, all swept away 
to feed the maw of this monster whose hunger 
is never satisfied. In the insane rivalry of 
armies and navies the taxes on the peoples 
doubled, trebled, were multiplied by ten. To 
her enormous outlay on the navy Britain was 
compelled in recent years to increase it by 
about fifteen or twenty millions of pounds 
sterling in each successive year. Think of 
the enormous cost of building up and main- 
taining, in such a comparatively short time, 
Germany's army of millions and adding to 
that a navy to rival Britain upon the seven 
seas. Contemplate the expenditure to-day. 
Think of the millions poured out by each na- 
tion day after day. Think of the British Par- 
liament in two separate votes — just two — and 
at this early stage of the war, authorizing the 
expenditure of £350,000,000, and doing it with 
the utmost ease. Not that I condemn that ac- 
tion — under the circumstances by all means 
let it be done. But it is easy enough to see 



PEACE WITH HONOR 185 

that so long as we live under an armed neu- 
trality our peace will rob us of our substance. 
The nations must be free and secure to en- 
joy the fruits of their labors. Think for a 
moment of the expenditure of men. The earn- 
ing power of men ceases when they devote 
themselves to military life. That is a bad 
enough waste in times of peace. But think 
of the expenditure in times of war. Bernhardi 
declares that war is a biological necessity to 
maintain the physical fitness of the race. But 
it is not so. It is not the survival of the fittest 
that war secures. It is the flower of the na- 
tion's manhood that is swept away in war. It 
is the "unfittest" who are left. It is a fact of 
history that through the slaughter of France's 
"fittest" men physically Napoleon lowered 
the average stature of the French nation by 
two or three inches. We want no peace that 
leaves us ever open to such a scourge as that, 
that wastes the men and money of the nation 
and makes impossible or insecure the perma- 
nent enjoyment of the fruits of labor's hands. 
Is it any wonder that the noblest of our states- 
men in every land, that is not insane with mili- 
tarism, have protested against this awful dev- 



186 WORLD POWER 

astating peace and pointed to the poor and 
the unemployed and the handicapped and 
aged for whom the nation in her consequent 
poverty has been unable to provide. 

My friends, let us not live in a fool's para- 
dise either concerning the nation's peace or 
our own. There is no peace worth while that 
is not founded on righteousness, that is not 
enduring, that does not secure to us the fruits 
of life's best and highest. For man and na- 
tion alike it is found in the will of God. We 
cannot defy His will and be at peace with 
Him. We cannot defy His will and carry 
in our hearts a calm that is unbroken through 
the years. We cannot defy His will and flour- 
ish in our souls in all that makes life truly rich. 
But in Christ we can have the peace that pass- 
eth all understanding, a peace that is most 
enduring when every earthly comfort slips 
away, a peace that is most serene when the 
skies above are dark. 

Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin? 
The blood of Jesus whispers peace within. 

Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed? 
To do the will of Jesus, this is rest. 



PEACE WITH HOlSrOR 187 

Peace, perfect peace, with sorrows surging round? 
On Jesus* bosom nought but calm is found. 

Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away? 
In Jesus' keeping we are safe and they. 

Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown? 
Jesus we know, and He is on the throne. 

Peace, perfect peace, death shadowing us and ours? 
Jesus hath vanquished death and all its powers. 

It is enough; earth's troubles soon shall cease. 
And Jesus call us to heaven's perfect peace. 



X 

TO A FINISH: THE BROTHERHOOD 
OF MAN 



X 

TO A FIlSriSH: THE BROTHERHOOD 
OF MAN 

Text: — "But in the latter days it shall come to 
pass. . ." — Micah 4:1. 

These are the words of an Old Testament 
prophet who gets an inspired vision of the 
golden age of man. It is a vision that is very 
daring and very wonderful. He sees the 
struggle of the ages fought "to a finish" and 
beyond "in the latter days" there emerges a 
new humanity, restored by the hand of God 
and inbreathed by the spirit of love. Here 
is a man who lifts his eyes beyond the mists 
and conflicts of time, beyond the storm and 
stress of society, the wars and rumors of wars 
among nations, the inequalities and injustices 
of the people, and he sees the rising of a new 
kingdom that harbors its citizens in the security 
and prosperity of righteousness, justice and 
peace. There the bitterness of strife is over, 

191 



192 WORLD POWER 

the spirit of brotherhood prevails, the greed 
of the miser is dead, the oppression of the 
poor is ended, the clang of the sword is si- 
lenced, and the golden age has come to hu- 
manity for the golden heart has come to man. 
Althought our text is taken from the prophecy 
of Micah this is not a vision that is confined 
to one prophet or patriarch in the Old Testa- 
ment or the New. Isaiah has it, in almost the 
same words ; Amos has it ; Hosea has it ; Jere- 
miah has it; and every prophet and patriarch 
carries this hope in his heart and this message 
on his lips. You may go as far back in the 
Old Testament as Abraham and you will find it 
there for even while he labored among the 
idolatrous cities of his own day, he had a vision 
of the latter days, and "he looked for a city 
which hath foundations whose builder and 
maker is God." You may go as far forward 
in the New Testament as John in the island 
of Patmos, and you will find it there for, 
even while he saw Rome seated on the seven 
hills and drunk with the blood of the saints, 
he saw in the latter days: "the holy city, the 
new Jerusalem, coming down from God out 
of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for 



TO A FINISH 193 

her husband." And ever in the hearts of men 
the dream of that perfect society has been 
cherished as a never-dying hope. Twenty- 
three centuries ago Plato enshrined it as best 
he could in his "Kepublic." Four centuries 
ago Sir Thomas More portrayed it as best 
he could in his "Utopia." The poets have sung 
of the hour that would usher in "the parlia- 
ment of man, the federation of the world," 
and even unto this day the world is filled with 
the voices that declare and define and announce 
the "golden age" of man. 

It is interesting to notice how that hope has 
revived itself in the presence of this latest col- 
lapse of civilization. The forces of tyranny 
and freedom, of reaction and progress are 
matched against each other and the conflict 
must be fought "to a finish." And somehow 
beyond that "finish" we instinctively hope for 
a new order of things, furnishing a clearer 
illustration of the brotherhood of man. Dis- 
tant as that desirable day may be it is not a 
useless hope. It may seem to be all visionary 
but we cannot do much without our visions. 
The very last man the world can spare is the 
dreamer. We are told that this realization is 



194 WORLD POWER 

far beyond our reach. We are reminded that 
with all the lapse of centuries our "progress 
halts on palsied feet." We are told that with 
all our efforts at regeneration society is still 

"Wandering between two worlds 
One dead, the other powerless to be born." 

That may be true but at the same time we 
shall not get far upon our way unless our 
"young men see visions and our old men dream 
dreams." Our work lies in the nearer days, 
'tis true, but we must keep our eyes on "the 
latter days" as well. We are crowded into 
the valleys of action but we must learn to 
glance at the mountains of hope. We must 
see the glorious goal if we are to walk with 
buoyant step along the way. We must not 
only see what we are working at but we must 
see what we are working for. Like Michael 
Angelo we must see the angel in the marble. 
Like Jesus Christ we must discover the thing 
that might be in the thing that is. And unless 
we are to be given over to a hopeless pessi- 
mism, unless we believe that we are fighting 
a losing game, unless we purpose to quit the 
field and surrender the spoils to the devil, we 



TO A FINISH 195 

must take our stand beside men like Mieah and 
say to ourselves and to our brothers: "The 
prospect may look dark now, but in the latter 
days it shall come to pass. . . ." 

What is it that shall come to pass? What 
is this "golden age" to be? What is God's 
Utopia like? What are its distinguishing 
characteristics ? 

The Supremacy of the Spiritual 

First of all let it be noticed that this "golden 
age" is distinguished by the supremacy of 
the spiritual. That is its most distinguishing 
feature. "And in the latter days it shall come 
to pass that the mountain of the house of the 
Lord shall be established in the tops of the 
mountains and shall be exalted among the 
hills" (4:1). That is, the spiritual shall be 
supreme. It shall dominate everything. It 
shall overshadow everything. The spiritual 
values will obtain, the spiritual standards will 
rule. There will be other towering mountains 
but the mountain of the house of the Lord will 
overtop them all. There will be other com- 
manding interests but the spiritual will be the 



196 WORLD POWER 

most commanding. In a very beautiful and 
suggestive illustration Dr, Jowett recalls the 
city of Durham as an emblem of the prophet's 
thought. Through the lower reaches of the 
city flows the river with the pleasure craft pass- 
ing up and down. Higher up on the first 
slopes are the shops and places of trade. Above 
this is the residential section of the city with 
the homes of the people. Above the homes 
is the Castle Hill with its frowning front, 
while on the highest summit and commanding 
all, with stately majesty, rises the grand old 
Cathedral. It is a fitting emblem of the great 
interests of life. Pleasure is suggested by the 
river; the highways of trade are representative 
of gain; the home is the shrine of the family; 
the castle is symbolic of power; and the Ca- 
thedral is significant of God. This is the pic- 
ture that Micah has in mind. In the latter 
days the spiritual will be supreme. In God's 
Utopia it will dominate and shape all our 
pleasures; it will rule in all our business; it 
will command and guide our home life ; it will 
determine our use of power. That is the pic- 
ture of the ideal society. Let us not deceive 
ourselves. We are not getting near the golden 



TO A FINISH 197 

age unless we are establishing the Lord's house 
on the top of the mountains; we are not ap- 
proaching the Utopia and never can except 
to that degree in which we make the spiritual 
the ruling factor in our life. 

As we look out upon the present day we 
are not without great reason for encourage- 
ment, for a new sense of the spiritual has come 
down upon us. I say that in spite of and in 
the presence of the clash and roar of the pres- 
ent conflict. The mighty upheaval that our 
civilization has suffered has served to uncover 
to us again some of the realities of life. We 
are beginning to revise our values. That trend 
has been apparent for some time. It has been 
apparent in the new philosophy of the hour. 
The materialistic philosophy of thirty years 
ago is as dead as the moon. It can never live 
again. If Marie Corelli were to write a novel 
crystallizing the underlying philosophy of the 
day she would not call it "The Mighty Atom." 
The mighty atom is exploded. 'No one be- 
lieves in the mighty atom as the origin of any- 
thing. It is apparent in the literature that 
has been commanding the attention of the 
reading world. True it is that there is much 



198 WORLD POWER 

that is atheistic and sodden in its materialism 
but no one could fail to notice how wide is 
that range of recent literature that contains 
one long protest against the materialistic and 
renews its affirmation of the spiritual element in 
man. Even in the face of the wholesale slaugh- 
ter of men on the fields of Europe we assert 
that we shall emerge from the war with a more 
profound sense of the value of human life. 
Everywhere there is a new recognition of the 
essential sacredness of personality, that every 
human being is created in the image of God, 
and that there are inalienable human rights 
that must be kept inviolate, because man is 
what he is — a spiritual being. 

The Results of the Spiritual Supremacy 

Three great and fruitful ministries will flow 
from this supremacy of the spiritual. 

1. It will bring a ministry of brotherhood 
among men. It will unite and not divide. It 
will draw men together by magnetic power. In 
God's Utopia it is said that "many nations 
shall come and say, Come let us go up to the 
mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God 



TO A FINISH 199 

of Jacob, and He will teach us all His ways 
and we wiU walk in His paths" (4:2). There 
is nothing more certain than that. The true 
brotherhood of men will be found in the su- 
premacy of the spiritual. No other force is 
sufficiently and permanently cohesive. Pleas- 
ure is frequently divisive, splitting society up 
into its cliques and sets. Commerce with the 
jealous protection of interests often keeps 
the nations asunder. We have proof enough 
before our eyes that union is not secured by 
force of arms. It is even possible that a false 
spirituality will divide men and women who 
name the name of Christ. But the spiritual 
dominance that Christ will bring will draw us 
all closer together in an unbroken brotherhood. 
And if we are to be accounted as the true fol- 
lowers of Christ there must be an end of all 
our exclusiveness towards those who name the 
name of Christ, whatever tongue they speak 
and in whatsoever clime they live. We must 
learn to look on men through His eyes ; to love 
those whom He loves whether they be black or 
red or white or yellow; to obliterate national 
prejudices by the power of His Divine love; 
to kiU all hatred in our hearts ; and to think of 



200 WORLD POWER 

those sheep which are not of this fold, that 
bringing them to our hearts there may be one 
fold as there is one shepherd. 

2. It will bring a ministry of construction. 
Where the spiritual is supreme men will "beat 
their swords into ploughshares, and their spears 
into pruning-hooks" (4:3). The destructive 
will be changed into the constructive. The 
weapon that reaped nothing but a harvest of 
death will be transfigured into a weapon that 
will reap the harvest of bread. It is a common 
hope, expressed in fervent words, that the 
sword may soon be sheathed again, but that is 
not the Divine ideal; or that it may be broken 
and cast away forever, but neither is this the 
Divine plan. No! not sheathed, nor broken, 
but hammered into a ploughshare! No! not 
cast away but beaten into a pruning-hook ! To 
such great ends are we invited to direct the 
forces of our civilization to-day. We are in- 
vited to take the millions of money poured out 
in the destructive business of warfare and not 
only withdraw it from those channels but pour 
it into the constructive arts of peace. We are 
invited to take the countless thousands of lives 
devoted to the God of Militarism and not only 



TO A FINISH 201 

withdraw them, but turn their energies into the 
fields of fruitful enterprise. And even in our 
warfare this is the goal that must be kept in 
mind. "The Son of man came not to destroy; 
men's lives but to save them." There are many 
elements within the German Empire that must 
be eradicated for the safety of the world, and 
the surgeon's hand must not be stayed. But 
even if it were possible, the German Empire 
must not be destroyed. Germany has a mis- 
sion for the world. Her great energies and 
immense resources of mind and heart must be 
pressed into the highest service of Europe. 
The brain and brawn that have been expend- 
ed in the development of military efficiency 
must not only be recalled from that fiendish 
business but must be directed into the great 
constructive ministries of civilization. Freed 
from the blight of her false philosophy, let us 
hope that her theologians and teachers, her 
statesmen and writers, her captains of industry 
and her masters of thought may take their 
place among the greatest benefactors of our 
common hf e. Her vast potentialities so sadly 
and so destructively gone astray must be har- 
nessed up to the high service for which they 



202 WORLD POWER 

were designed. In other words her sword must 
be beaten into a ploughshare and her spear 
into a pruning-hook. 

3. The supremacy of the spiritual will bring 
a ministry of social justice. When the spirit- 
ual is supreme "every man shall sit under his 
vine and under his fig-tree" (4:4). There will 
be a little beauty for everybody, — "the vine 
and fig-tree"; there will be a little ease for 
everybody, "they shall sit" ; there will be a lit- 
tle reward for everybody, "his vine and his fig- 
tree." Life will not be a dreary monotony. 
It will be furnished with protection and leisure 
and the fair division of comforts and the due 
reward of our labor. "And none shall make 
them afraid." The haunting fear of poverty 
and war and famine will not be found in that 
order of things. Who wiU question for a mo- 
ment that this is not a faint outline of our so- 
ciety as God designed it to be and as He shall 
some day m^^ake it to be? It is toward that goal 
that our true spirituality will work. Our 
spirituality is not the spirituality of God nor 
of His Christ unless it drives us out to feed 
the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the 
sick, to minister to the imprisoned, and to 



TO A FINISH 203 

sweep the whole man, body, soul and spirit, in 
all his relationships — social, domestic, political, 
personal — into the imperial purpose of the 
Kingdom of God. 

This, my friends, is "the finish" to which 
we look when "He maketh wars to cease unto 
the end of the earth." Only let us remember 
it shall not come in the power of a mere prin- 
ciple nor in the wisdom of men. It shall come 
not apart from a Divine Sovereign. There 
is no one of our great prophets who cherishes 
that hope apart from a King. The key to the 
future is furnished by all in the words of 
Isaiah: "Behold a King shall reign in right- 
eousness." It is His presence alone that will 
bring in the "golden day." His day may be 
near or distant, we know not. But this we 
know, that we can hasten the day of His power, 
we can prepare the way of the Lord, we can 
raise up a highway for the King. We can 
level the mountains and exalt the valleys and 
make smooth the rough and make straight the 
crooked. Until, when He shall stand within 
our midst His righteousness shall cover the 
earth as the waters cover the face of the deep. 














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